THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 193 



mersion by forgotten seas. At their feet throbs 

 now the heart of a smoky modern city and a grim 

 river pushing its way through a rockbound canon. 

 The pigmy, man, drives blasts into massive walls 

 piled up by the stupendous, secret labor of the ages, 

 and abstracts in pigmy wagons fragments of the 

 Eternal Hills. 



Cortes, who cannot well be left behind owing 

 to an inadequate partiality for human companion- 

 ship taken in the general, rises in his basket as the 

 brakeman yells the name of the last station and 

 vigorously shakes his collar. The brakeman grins 

 appreciatively. 



"That's a smart little feller !" he whispers in my 

 ear. "Always lays low this way till I call this last 

 stop, for he knows it's too late to put him off 

 now !" 



But the ways of Cortes, like his mysterious an- 

 cestry, are often past finding out, as are those of 

 his son, Montezuma. Suffice it to say that he does 

 know, not merely this relatively simple matter of 

 stations but others hidden from our mere human 

 vision. 



His table manners are so distinguished, also as 

 those of his son and contrary to those of the greedy 

 and grasping Betsinda, that cafes and restaurants 

 look the other way as he slips in and crouches at 

 my feet. When I rise to depart from a Chinese 

 resort a China boy hands me a package of scraps, 

 with the smiling observation — "For the leetle dog!" 

 Cortes recognizes furthermore the fine distinction 



