Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver
mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was
nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money;
but the very rumours reached it circuitously--from abroad even, so
much was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, not only by natural
obstacles, but also by the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were
besieging Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased
to come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk the
journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from
Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps captured by the
parties of the enemy raiding the country between the Cordillera and
the capital. Monterist publications, however, found their way into the
province, mysteriously enough; and also Monterist emissaries preaching
death to aristocrats in the villages and towns of the Campo. Very early,
at the beginning of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed
(through the agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to
deliver two of them to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had
come to offer him a free pardon and the rank of colonel from General
Montero in consideration of joining the rebel army with his mounted
band. No notice was taken at the time of the proposal. It was joined, as
an evidence of good faith, to a petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for
permission to enlist, with all his followers, in the forces being
then raised in Sulaco for the defence of the Five-Year Mandate of
regeneration. The petition, like everything else, had found its way
into Don Jose's hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of
dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village store),
covered with the crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre,
carried off from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to be the
secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamplight
of the Gould drawing-room over the document containing the fierce and
yet humble appeal of the man against the blind and stupid barbarity
turning an honest ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest
stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, he had
been treated with humanity and the respect due to his sacred calling. He
had been, it appears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of the
band, and he guaranteed the sincerity of their good disposition. He had
distributed heavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts;
but he argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make their
peace with God durably till they had made peace with men.

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