Nostromo | Page 4

your back. Every man,
woman, and child in that port is my friend. And who's to prove the lighter wasn't sunk? I
didn't show you where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I
lied? Eh?"
Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that impenitent thief,
deserted from the schooner. The whole episode takes about three pages of his
autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I looked them over, the curious confirmation
of the few casual words heard in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time
when everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of
strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men's passions in the dusk,
gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world
something to write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal
steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity--so people say. It's either true or untrue;
and in any case it has no value in itself. To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery
did not appeal to me, because my talents not running that way I did not think that the
game was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner of the
treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man of
character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was
only then that I had the first vision of a twilight country which was to become the
province of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty Campo for mute witnesses
of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in good and evil.
Such are in very truth the obscure origins of "Nostromo"--the book. From that moment, I
suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if warned by the instinct of
self-preservation from venturing on a distant and toilsome journey into a land full of
intrigues and revolutions. But it had to be done.
It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals of renewed hesitation,
lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging vistas opening before me as I progressed
deeper in my knowledge of the country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a
standstill over the tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack
my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the "Mirror
of the Sea." But generally, as I've said before, my sojourn on the Continent of Latin
America, famed for its hospitality, lasted for about two years. On my return I found
(speaking somewhat in the style of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily

glad to learn that the fuss was all over, and our small boy considerably grown during my
absence.
My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of course, my venerated friend,
the late Don Jose Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc., in his
impartial and eloquent "History of Fifty Years of Misrule." That work was never
published--the reader will discover why--and I am in fact the only person in the world
possessed of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest meditation,
and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to myself, and to allay the fears of
prospective readers, I beg to point out that the few historical allusions are never dragged
in for the sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is closely related to
actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of current events or affecting directly the
fortunes of the people of whom I speak.
As to their own histories I have tried to set them down, Aristocracy and People, men and
women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician, with as cool a hand as was
possible in the heat and clash of my own conflicting emotions. And after all this is also
the story of their conflicts. It is for the reader to say how far they are deserving of interest
in their actions and in the secret purposes of their hearts revealed in the bitter necessities
of the time. I confess that, for me, that time is the time of firm friendships and
unforgotten hospitalities. And in my gratitude I must mention here Mrs. Gould, "the first
lady of Sulaco," whom we may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr. Monygham, and
Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Material Interests whom we must leave to his
Mine--from which there