" He was tall,
black-whiskered, and discreet. It was known that he had easy access to
ministers, and that the numerous Costaguana generals were always anxious
to dine at his house. Presidents granted him audience with facility. He
corresponded actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos;
but his letters--unless those expressing formally his dutiful
affection--were seldom entrusted to the Costaguana Post Office. There
the envelopes are opened, indiscriminately, with the frankness of a
brazen and childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish-American
Governments. But it must be noted that at about the time of the
re-opening of the San Tome mine the muleteer who had been employed by
Charles Gould in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small
train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried over the mountain
passes between the Sta. Marta upland and the Valley of Sulaco. There
are no travellers by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very
exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland trade did not visibly
require additional transport facilities; but the man seemed to find his
account in it.
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