This is the psychological moment for the United States to be up and doing; the time for her to grasp the golden opportunities that now present themselves in every department of human endeavor, and to secure those points of vantage in the great centers of trade and industry that are so essential for her success in the future.

We are no longer the debtor nation that we have been for so many decades. Our foreign obligations have been met and we are now in a position to invest a portion of our rapidly accumulating surplus outside of our own country. Nowhere shall we find a better outlet for excess capital than in South America. Everywhere there are electric and steam railways to be built, telegraph and telephone systems to be inaugurated, water and electric power plants to be erected, factories and docks to be constructed, agricultural and stock-raising enterprises to be developed, mines of iron and copper and tin, of silver, gold and diamonds to be exploited, and other industries, too numerous to mention, but certain to yield good dividends, to be financed. And lastly, but probably the most important undertaking of all, there is the great Pan-American railroad-that matchless thoroughfare to be completed, which is to unite the two continents by bands of steel and make it possible for one to travel in a Pullman car from New York to Buenos Aires. Merchants and capitalists cannot begin too soon their campaign to secure their share of the enormous and rapidly growing trade of South America. They should be prepared in time by the establishment of banks, and mercantile houses and fast steamship lines to reap all the advantages that will accrue to them from the opening of the Panama Canal, which is destined to revolutionize the trade routes of the world and put the Pacific coast of South America within easy reach of our Atlantic and Gulf ports. If our merchants and bankers were to exhibit a tithe of the enterprise and perseverance and diplomacy which have made the Germans so prominent in every one of the South American republics, if our statesmen were to display the wisdom and

initiative and foresight of Bismarck and William II, who have built up a merchant-marine that is unrivaled, and extended the commerce of the Vaterland to every corner of the globe, we could entertain the hope of being able to retrieve the losses we have suffered by having our trade carried in foreign bottoms, and of regaining the prestige that was ours when the stars and stripes fluttered on every sea, and when our ships carried over ninety per cent. of our export trade, instead of the insignificant nine per cent. which it carries to-day.

It was a year, almost to the hour, from the time I left home until I caught the first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, on my return from the land of palms and perpetual summer. I had visited all the lands, and more, which I purposed seeing on setting out on my long journey through the untraveled and little known regions bordering the equator. And without haste and without difficulty, I had been able to make it in the time I had allowed myself before my departure. I left home as an invalid seeking health and recreation. I found both, and returned to my own with health restored and with a greater capacity for work than I had known for years. Naturally I was gratified with my success-gratified not only that I had accomplished what I had set out to do in a given time, but gratified also that I had thereby proved that one may traverse even the wildest and least populated parts of South America with comparative ease and comfort.

But much as I had enjoyed every hour of my Wandertage, happy as I had always been in the contemplation of the sublime and the beautiful on Andean heights and in Amazonian plains, grateful as were the balmy breezes and delicate perfumes of the equinoctial regions, where at times I fancied I would fain tarry forever, still I was never so delighted to return to the land of my birth as on this occasion.

As at the time of my departure a twelvemonth before, so now also was New York in the grip of the Frost King, and all nature seemed to be dead. But the contrast with

all I had left behind me but two weeks previously appealed to me in a singular manner, and made me realize, as never before how pleasurable is the recurrent change of seasons in our northern latitudes as compared with the uniformity of climate in the tropics which, in spite of the splendid luxuriance and endless variety of plant-life, becomes at times so monotonous as to be almost oppressive. The leafless trees and the snow-covered ground possessed for me unwonted beauty; the arctic blasts that lashed the ocean into foam, gave forth a music which, until then, I had never recognized. And as I stood forward on the upper deck, while we were steaming into the great city's harbor, where loving hearts were awaiting me, I was minded of Petrarch's return home, after a long absence, and of his noble apostrophe to his country, so apt now to express my own sentiments:

"Hail, land beloved of God, O holiest, hail!

To good men safe, a menace to the proud;
Land of the great, the shores more gracious far,
More rich of soil, more beautiful than all;

Girt with twin seas, famed for thy gleaming mount,
Of arms and peaceful laws the holy shrine;
Pierian home, with wealth of gold and men,
Nature and art united on thee pour

Their gifts, making thee mistress of the world.
To thee at last I yearningly return,

Still, still thy citizen.

Thee, fatherland, I own and greet with joy,
Hail, beauteous Mother, pride of nations, hail!"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PARTIAL LIST OF THE WORKS CITED IN THIS VOLUME

ACOSTA, PADRE JOSÉ DE. Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Sevilla, 1590. Translated into English in 1604 by Grimston. AGASSIZ, PROFESSOR AND MRS. LOUIS. A Journey in Brazil. Boston, 1868.

AMEGHINO, F. Antiguedad del Hombre en El Plata. Buenos Aires, 1880.

AMICH, FRAY JOSÉ. Compendio Historico de los Trabajos de la Serafica Religion en las Montañas del Peru. Paris, 1854. ANDGRAND, M. LE. Lettre sur les Antiquités de Tiaguanaco et l' Origine Présumable de la plus Ancienne Civilization du Haut-Perou. Paris, 1866.

ANGLERIUS, PETRUS MARTYR. De nouo orbe, or the historie of the West Indies, contayning the actes and aduentures of the Spanyardes, which haue conquered and peopled those countries, inriched with varitie of pleasant relation of the manners, ceremonies, lawes, gouernments, and warres of the Indians. Comprised in 8 decades. Written by Peter Martyr a Millanoise of Angleria, chiefe secretary. Whereof three, haue beene formerly translated into English, by R. Eden, whereunto the other fiue, are newly added by the industrie, and painefull trauaile of M. Lok. Gent. London, 1612.

Antologia de poetas Hispano-Americanos, publicada por la Real Academia Española. Madrid, 1894.

ARRIAGA, PABLO JOSÉ DE. Extirpacion de la Ydolatria de los Indios del Peru. Lima, 1621.

BALUFFI, GAETANO. L'America un Tempo Spgnuola. Ancona, 1845.

BANDELIER, ADOLPH F. The Islands of Titicaca and Koati. New York, 1910.

BATES, H. W. The Naturalist on the Amazons. London, 1863. BELAUNDE, VICTOR ANDRES. El Peru Antiguo y los Modernos Sociologos. Lima, 1908.