In the realms which they were entering, Truth, shattered into a thousand
gleaming fragments, might be held in part, but never wholly. There man's
quarry was the false Florimel, and she lured him on and he saw with
magically anointed eyes. Too suddenly awakened, the imagination of the
time was reeling; its sap ran too fast; wonders of the outer,
revelations of the inner, universe crowded too swiftly; the heady wine
made now gods, now fools of men. The white light was not for the heirs
of that age, nor yet the golden mean. Wonders happened, that they knew,
and so like children they looked for strange chances. There was no
miracle at which their faith would balk, no illusion whose cobweb tissue
they cared to tear away. Give but a grain whereon to build, a phenomenon
before which started back, amazed and daunted, the knowledge of the age,
and forthwith a mighty imagination leaped upon it, claimed it for its
own. There had been but a grain of sand, an inexplicable fact--lo! now,
a rounded pearl shot with all the hues of the morning, a miracle of
grace or an evidence of diabolic power, to doubt which was heresy!

Adventurers to the Spanish Main believed in devil-haunted seas, in
flying islands, in a nation of men whose eyes were set in their
shoulders, and of women who cut off the right breast and slew every male
child. They believed in a hidden city, from end to end a three days'
march, where gold-dust thickened the air, and an Inca drank with his
nobles in a garden whose plants waved not in the wind, whose flowers
drooped not, whose birds never stirred upon the bough, for all alike
were made of gold. They believed in a fair fountain, hard indeed to
find, but of such efficacy that the graybeard who dipped in its shining
waters stepped forth a youth upon ever-vernal banks.

So with these who like an arrow now clave the blue to the point of
danger. In this strange half of the world where nature's juggling hand