VII.
Well, after that we toiled away
At drawing maps, and day by day
Blood made an accurate survey
Of all that seemed to lend
A chance, no matter how remote,
Of letting our financier float
That triumph of Imagination,
“The Libyan Association.”
In this the “Negroes’ friend”
Was much concerned to show the way
Of making Missionaries pay.
At night our leader and our friend
Would deal in long discourses
Upon this meritorious end,
And how he would arrange it.
“The present way is an abuse
Of Economic Forces;
They Preach, but they do not Produce.
Observe how I would change it.
I’d have the Missionary lent,
Upon a plot of land,
A sum at twenty-five per cent.;
And (if I understand
The kind of people I should get)
An ever-present fear of debt
Would make them work like horses,
And form the spur, or motive spring,
In what I call ‘developing
The Natural resources’;
While people who subscribe will find
Profit and Piety combined.”
Imagine how the Mighty Scheme,
The Goal, the Vision, and the Dream
Developed in his hands!
With such a purpose, such a mind
Could easily become inclined
To use the worst of lands!
Thus once we found him standing still,
Enraptured, on a rocky hill;
Beneath his feet there stank
A swamp immeasurably wide,
Wherein a kind of fœtid tide
Rose rhythmical and sank,
Brackish and pestilent with weeds
And absolutely useless reeds,
It lay; but nothing daunted
At seeing how it heaved and steamed
He stood triumphant, and he seemed
Like one possessed or haunted.
With arms that welcome and rejoice,
We heard him gasping, in a voice
By strong emotion rendered harsh:
“That Marsh—that Admirable Marsh!”
The Tears of Avarice that rise
In purely visionary eyes,
Were rolling down his nose.
He was no longer Blood the Bold,
The Terror of his foes;
But Blood inflamed with greed of gold.
He saw us, and at once became
The Blood we knew, the very same
Whom we had loved so long.
He looked affectionately sly,
And said, “perhaps you wonder why
My feelings are so strong?
You only see a swamp, but I——
My friends, I will explain it.
I know some gentlemen in town
Will give me fifty thousand down,
Merely for leave to drain it.”
A little later on we found
A piece of gently rolling ground
That showed above the flat.
Such a protuberance or rise
As wearies European eyes.
To common men, like Sin and me
The Eminence appeared to be
As purposeless as that.
Blood saw another meaning there,
He turned with a portentous glare,
And shouted for the Native Name.
The Black interpreter in shame
Replied: “The native name I fear
Is something signifying Mud.”
Then, with the gay bravado
That suits your jolly Pioneer,
In his prospectus Captain Blood
Baptized it “Eldorado.”
He also said the Summit rose
Majestic with Eternal Snows.