Let us be thankful for what we have. Quintana, the great Spanish lyrical poet, pondering on these misdeeds and crimes, exclaims that they were crimes of the epoch, not of Spain. Fortunately it is, as we like to think, our privilege to live in an epoch when such things are impossible, when the mere thirst for gold, or its equivalent, cannot impel powerful nations to forget right and justice and to proclaim hypocritically that in so doing they are fulfilling the law of Him who said, 'Love ye one another,' and proclaimed charity amongst men as the supreme rule of life. Nowadays such wrongs as those perpetrated by the Spanish conquerors could not happen. Wars we have, and violence and destruction, and malcontents complain of them, saying that the same old burglarious spirit of brutal greed is the real cause of those wars; but those malcontents should not be (and, in fact, are not) listened to. I myself do not understand or pretend to explain where the justice of many wars comes in, but certainly they must be waged for good and honest ends, because the great and the powerful say that the ends are good and honest, that civilization and Christianity are served thereby; and it must be so since they say it, for they, like Brutus, are 'honourable men.' Let us be thankful, then, that we live in an age of justice and universal fairness amongst men!
All this time we journeyed on. The stars had kept their watch above our heads, and the moon, as if passing in review the various quarters of heaven, had been moving from west to east, and was very high on the horizon. We were chilled through after the night's ride, longing to arrive at some wayside inn or _venta_ where we might get something warm. The dawn was heralded in the far east by a broad streak of light, which grew rapidly, covering that side of the horizon like a fan, and soon bursting into glorious daylight. In equatorial regions there is hardly any dawn or twilight; in those latitudes there is no prelude of semi-obscurity that either waxes into day or wanes slowly into the dark, like the note of the lute, falling into silence so faintly and softly that none can tell the exact moment when it dies. At evening the sun sinks to the verge of the horizon, and disappears like a luminous orb dropped into empty space, and darkness sets in almost immediately. In the mountainous lands his last rays crown the highest peaks with a halo of glory, when darkness has settled over the valleys and mountain flanks. The moment the sun sets the stars assert their empire, and they are more numerous to the eye than anywhere else in the world. As for the moon, I have already spoken of its brilliancy. Another phenomenon connected with it is worthy of notice in our special case. During the various months of the trip which I am now describing, it seems to me that we had a full moon every night. I know that this is not quite in accordance with the established rules, or what in modern parlance is sometimes called the schedule of time for lunar service, but I am narrating my impressions, and, according to them, such is the fact. I should suggest that, as everything in Spanish lands is more or less topsy-turvy at times, the rules applicable to the moon in well-regulated countries do not hold good there, but I remember just in time that these irregularities apply solely to things human that happen 'tiles downwards,' as the Spaniards say, and cannot, therefore, affect the phenomena of Nature. As an explanation must be found for my permanent moon, an acceptable compromise would be that the ordinary moon did duty on its appointed nights, leaving the others--during which we wandered over mountain, through valley and forest, and on the waters of the silent rivers--to be illuminated for our own special benefit by some deputy moon, for whose services we were then, and still are, most grateful.