semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of
lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.

On one side of this broad curve in the straight seaboard of the Republic
of Costaguana, the last spur of the coast range forms an insignificant
cape whose name is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point of
the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of a steep hill
at the back can be made out faintly like a shadow on the sky.

On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist
floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula
of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by
vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone
stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of
sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the
rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil
enough--it is said--to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were
blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of
consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is
deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the
neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains,
tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a
basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of
shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony
levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time
had perished in the search. The story goes also that within men's memory
two wandering sailors--Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for
certain--talked over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three
stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, a water-skin,
and provisions enough to last a few days. Thus accompanied, and with