seeing through their eyes, would view the dark hulk of our old ship
framed in a glittering golden cloud. Where I now stood, almost alone in
the gloom, the vivid imagination of those men yonder in the banquet-hall
at that very hour perceived the mirage of the speculative fever crowding
the decks of the Pereire steamers with imaginary colonists eager to
convert their savings into mining stocks and Mexican railroad bonds, and
rushing to the land of Montezuma to sow and reap a rich harvest for
Prance.

How many wretches were induced to risk their money upon such
representations?* Oh, the dreariness, the loneliness, of that first
night at anchor in the Bay of Biscay! The misgivings that filled my
heart! Who was right? What should I find over there? Surely these
statesmen, capitalists, journalists, legislators, should know what they
were doing.

* "L'Opinion Nationale," August 30, 1866, stated that 300,000
bondholders invested in Mexican securities which in 1866 were worth no
more than the paper they were printed on.

And yet, beyond the line of the western horizon, which only a few hours
before they had peopled with glittering visions, there slowly rose in
the darkness the phantom of an arrested coach, of panic-stricken
travelers, of fierce murderers assaulting a young man, of a dead body on
the roadside; and this empty ship seemed more real at that moment than
all that I had yet heard or read.

After stopping to coal at Fort-de-France, in the beautiful island of
Martinique, and a few days later stopping at Santiago de Cuba, we
finally, on May 2, caught sight of a dark, broadening line upon the