マリーア — ホルヘ・イサークス
Notice This book was produced in EPUB format by the Internet Archive. The book pages were scanned and converted to EPUB format automatically. This process relies on optical character recognition, and is somewhat susceptible to errors. The book may not offer the correct reading sequence, and there may be weird characters, non-words, and incorrect guesses at structure. Some page numbers and headers or footers may remain from the scanned page. The process which identifies images might have found stray marks on the page which are not actually images from the book. The hidden page numbering which may be available to your ereader corresponds to the numbered pages in the print edition, but is not an exact match; page numbers will increment at the same rate as the corresponding print edition, but we may have started numbering before the print book's visible page numbers. The Internet Archive is working to improve the scanning process and resulting books, but in the meantime, we hope that this book will be useful to you. The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet library and to promote universal access to all knowledge. The Archive's purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. The Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages, and provides specialized services for information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. Created with hocr-to-epub (v.1.0.0) Page 1 The text on this page is estimated to be only 2.28% accurate <^mmi^M£^m^m^fi£smsssms^Kmm^m »■■■■■■■ ffffifiif^^^m MARIA ■^T7TT7T?T7TZT77T7T7Y7777:rZ777Zn ^^SSSSM " ~\ r*' p^ : Xl I'l. t^ p.: ^N ^ t^ .'"'ii 1 ^ i \ l/>i h^h ^'^! h:V ? ^/ M. ~"sf.-.S-v \ . Aii||AAr1A0], JORGE- ISAACS Page 9 The text on this page is estimated to be only 3.20% accurate f i/>^^^V / / Page 13 A SOUTH AMERICAN ROMANCE. Page 15 *'"'" JORGE ISAACS mo MARIA A SOUTH AMERICAN ROMANCE THE TRANSLATION By ROLLO OGDEN AN INTRODUCTION By THOMAS A. JANVIER NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE I 890 Page 16 The text on this page is estimated to be only 20.84% accurate Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. mROLD B. LEE LIBRAfiy BRIOHAM YOUNG UNlVGRSlTf { PBOVO, UTAH Page 17 INTRODUCTION It is a fact, but a fact not adequately appreciated, that American literature was born, and for a long while received its nourishment, in the Spanish colonies. The first book printed on this continent was a Spanish book. It came from the press in the year 1537: and it antedated the "Bay Psalm Book" by three years more than a century. In his scholarly " Bibliografia Mexicana," my honored friend Don Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta has produced a catalogue raiso7ine of all the books published in Mexico before the year 1600. His list includes one hundred and sixteen titles — and it ends twenty )^ears before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. A little more than seventy years ago Dr. Berestain y Souza published his "Biblioteca Hispano- Americana Setentrional;" a work which, while confined almost exclusively to Mexican authors, contains upwards of twelve thousand titles distributed under nearly four thousand names. So far from abating, this extraordinary literary fecundity has increased steadily during the present century, while the quality of the Page 18 VI INTRODUCTION. work produced has been steadily refined : for the genius of letters never has ceased to abide with the Spanish Americans among whom American literature was born. It is but a part of our unfortunate lack of knowledge of all matters concerning these neighbors of ours that we are so ignorant of what they have accomplished in literature — to say nothing of what they have accomplished in other directions — during the past three hundred and fifty years. Of Mexico, because of the possibility of making cheap excursions thither by rail, a few of us have f lined a superficial knowledge : but the names of the republics beyond Mexico — Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and onward through Colombia and Venezuela into the vast region of South America — to most of us are names only; or, at best, are names which arouse in our minds but vague thoughts of sixteenth-century adventurers, and coffee -growing, and revolutions, and Mr. Church's landscapes, and filibustering expeditions, and the purchase of guano and hides. Of the real people, leading real lives, who dwell in these countries — of their achievements, and of what they have failed to achieve, of their social organization and customs, and especially of the intimate life of their homes — we scarcely could know less were they the inhabitants of another world. Indeed, to come to the matter immediately in hand, no apter illustration can be had of this ignorance on our part of interests which are very near to us than that there should be need to explain anything whatever to English Page 19 INTRODUCTION. Vll speaking Americans in regard to a story that has been the admiration and the delight of their immediate neighbors, dwelling close beside them on the same continent, for more than twenty years. In a business way we do, of course, know something of these otherwise unknown lands and peoples; but the information that comes to us through commercial channels is not of the most edifying nature, and it is highly objective in the matter of its point of view. By a happy coincidence, I find in this morning's press despatches an interview with an enterprising citizen of the United States who is described as being "engaged in the transportation business" in Colombia, and who just now is having built at Pittsburg a brace of steamboats for use upon the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. This person, in his way, probably, is typical ; and, from his own stand-point, the views which he expresses concerning the people of Colombia are far from flatteri