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Updated: May 1, 2025
When in the tropics they saw, for the first time, shoals of flying-fish of the size of pilchards, chased by bonitos and dolphins, or "dorados," as the Spaniards called them. Also, as they watched the flying-fish trying to escape from their foes in the water, they observed huge birds pounce down and seize the helpless fugitives.
Much as I have travelled in these realms of gold, I have yet seen, upon that map or abstract, names of El Dorados that still haunt the ear of memory, and are still but names. The Floating Beacon why was that denied me? or The Wreck Ashore?
Friday 28th September, they saw many dorados, and on Saturday a water-wagtail, which is a species of sea bird that never rests, but perpetually pursues the gulls till they mute for fear, which the other catches in the air. Of these there are great numbers about the Cape Verde islands. Soon after many gulls appeared, and numbers of flying fishes.
They belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in Hong Kong and Anam, in Borneo and Rhodesia, in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, in Panama and Havana these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms.
Mentioning his wish to emigrate to some point or place where he might expect more speedy success in his profession, Jackson, with his accustomed ardor and emphasis, advised him to go to one of these new Territories, and in such colors did he paint their advantages and the certain and immediate success of any young man of abilities and industry, that Porter's imagination was fired, and he immediately determined to go at once to one of these El Dorados there to fix his home and commence the strife with fortune, to coax or command her approving smiles.
The first means adopted by the northern maritime nations to appropriate to themselves a share of the riches of the New World was open, semi-piratical attack upon the Spanish argosies returning from those distant El Dorados.
The happy-faced mother, who could be radiant and calm at once, small, but with a sphere that was not small, and blessed us grandly, received gifts that had been arranged by Una and the nurse after all the other El Dorados were thoroughly veiled, and our hearts stood still to hear her musical cry of delight, when, having directed the rest of us to our presents, she at last uncovered her own.
Such is my confidence in your judgment that you have but to say, "Fool, give up thine El Dorados and stay at home; stick to the books and the desk; annihilate that redundance of animal life that is in thee; grow a mental machine: thy physical gifts are of no avail to thee; take thy place among the slaves of the Lamp," and I will obey without a murmur.
Then was the time to turn to the back of the play-book and to study that enticing double file of names, where poetry, for the true child of Skelt, reigned happy and glorious like her Majesty the Queen. Much as I have travelled in these realms of gold, I have yet seen, upon that map or abstract, names of El Dorados that still haunt the ear of memory, and are still but names.
It was then that Burleigh and Walsingham talked statecraft; that Raleigh and Drake, Frobisher and Grenville, sailed the seas and beat the Spanish Armada; that the "sea-dogs" brought the treasures of the New World to the feet of the queen, and filled men's minds with dreams of El Dorados where gold and jewels were as common as the sand on the seashore.
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