In Quest of El Dorado

Yucatan, the site of the ruins of the Maya civilization, was the first part of Mexico to be discovered, for it was the point of the mainland nearest to the Indies. De Cordova vi...

Columbus sought first a new way to India and glory for Spain, and then his followers sought gold and gems. Spain made a rapid transit in Time. For, as a young man has visions an...

Over the sea in a tiny boat to the island of Haiti, and to the eastern half of it which is called Santo Domingo. The voyage is still westward and along the eighteenth parallel a...

At the end of November I went to Cibola, which had been the goal, four hundred years ago, of Coronado and his companions. I had hoped to ride over the ground of Cortes' conquest...

One of the poets at Santa Fe had decided to return East and finish a University course which he had broken by a year of freedom and poetry in New Mexico. So Wilfrid Ewart bought...

I carried on my shoulder through the streets of Madrid Maria del Carmen de Silva y Azlor de Aragon. She was too proud to admit that she was tired, but was ready to accept the un...

The story of the Indians in America is the story of the weak in the presence of the strong. Despite the ideals which reign in capitals and cultural centers it is always the same...

"We don't know where we are going, but we're on the way," runs a light-hearted, popular saying. "Heaven or Hell--which?" the evangelists ask in one breath. No national answer wi...

Here the event happened which saddened the year: my friend was killed. Wilfrid Ewart, to whose genius and person I was devoted, and who in turn was very fond of us, was shot on...

They tease the American children born in the Canal Zone and call them "speakity babies," but the same children, when they grow up a little, are proud of their birthplace and say--

It came as a pleasant surprise, upon entering Mexican territory, to receive gold coins in exchange for paper money. Mexico since 1920 has had a gold and silver currency and no b...

Porto Rico was discovered by Columbus in 1493, and he entered the port of San Juan, naming it San Juan de Porto Rico--St. John of the Fine Harbor--hence the name of the island i...

There must be twenty thousand mendicant venders of lottery tickets in Cuba, from ragged urchins to reputable graybeards wearing straw hats and carefully creased trousers. These...

When Thorp took horses up to pasture we sometimes went also. That meant a ten-mile ride up into the greener heights of the mountains, the leaving of the horses in a roughly wire...

Its discovery was part of the fruitless quest of El Dorado by Coronado--the greatest hole in the world and nothing in it. He had hoped to find another Mexico in the North and de...

We left the beautiful harbor of Cadiz, with its white houses and palm trees and its daintily silhouetted towers and turrets, and the shores unclasped the blue bay and we rode up...

New Mexico is the only Catholic State in the Union. Maryland has the tradition of Catholicism, but New Mexico has the verisimilitude of a Latin country in Europe. When, in 1848,...

Ewart was much surprised by the politeness of Chicago. If he made a mistake in New York, such as to bring his lighted cigarette into a car of the overhead railway, he met with s...

Judging the tropics in midsummer to be too tiring, I decided to postpone our journey to Panama and Mexico until autumn and winter. Balboa climbed that peak in Darien in Septembe...

Travelling by way of Rouen and Chartres to Burgos and Toledo, and by way of Bordeaux to Cordoba and Cadiz prompts certain comparisons--Spain is grander than France; France has m...

I sailed to New York from Colon on one of those transports designed for the use of Canal employees. When the berths are not all taken by officials and their wives the remainder...

From the Jungle to the Canal is almost as great a leap as to New York itself--out of barbarism to the most advanced post of civilization, the place where in all the world the St...

Mexico is a country marked for conquest. It is no doubt the most romantic country of the New World but its history has been the most sordid. It is gilded with tales of fortune a...

From the dry, bracing, upper air of Santa Fe, where you may ride for long without raising a moist particle on your brow, down to hot and humid New Orleans, where, without stirri...

Returning from Grand Cañon we discussed plans for the coming year. Ewart had his Scots Guards history, which he ought to finish by the summer, and then he was going North to the...