I'm going to talk about automatic conference scheduling using pulp and a few words about myself. I'm Mark Lamberg. I've been doing Python for many, many years. I studied mathematics. I live in Düsseldorf in Germany. I'm a senior consultant and I did a lot of work for the Python Software Foundation, the European Python Society, there's our talk manager, and yeah, I'm the chair of the European Python Society at the moment, and so I'm very busy organizing this conference. Right, so what I wanted to talk about here in the talk is linear programming. How many of you know linear programming? Quite a few, that's good. So linear programming is a term that comes from operations research, which is a field in mathematics, so it doesn't have all that much to do with computer science, and what they call linear programming is actually something that has to do with optimization. And so programming in the sense means that you want to find some optimal solution for a problem that you have. Linear of course means that the problem that you're looking at has to be representable using linear functions, so both the constraints that you have, the side conditions that you need to fulfill plus the function that you actually want to optimize, they both need to be linear. This is something that's, it's very easy to understand, it's typically easy to write down, but finding optimal solutions can be extremely hard, so if you know from computer science, these problems are usually NP-hard, so they have exponential run time. Okay, my laptop is going crazy. Right, so let's look at mathematics behind this. So what you have when you define one of these problems is you have a set of variables, the XI variables you see here, those can be usually floats or integers, then you have factors that you add to these variables and then you add everything together and then you say, okay, this is my objective function, so it's the function that you want to optimize, or you can also use this kind of method of writing down things for writing down your constraints, and I put up some pictures here, those are the constraints, so essentially what you do is you have one linear function and then you define multiple ones of those and you say one side of this linear function is supposed to be in the set of allowable values. Should I just plug in again, maybe the HDMI, yeah? Yeah, okay, no problem. I hope my notebook won't crash because of this. Can you see something now? Is it working now for you? You saw that, okay, perfect. Well, you can see something, that's the main purpose of the talk, right? So I've drawn up some constraints here, you can see this yellow area, this yellow area is the set of allowed values and of course what you want to do is you want to, in that area, you want to optimize the function that you're interested in. So let's turn to Pulp. Pulp is a Python implementation which provides an interface to these solvers for linear programming problems and Pulp itself is part of a larger library called Coin or R, so they have various tools in there which are usually very interesting to use and it's all written in Python and if you're doing, if you're solving problems in this space then this is definitely something to look at. Pulp itself, it's basically a front end to LP solvers but it also comes with a, it's a slow solver but it comes with a solver that's completely written in Python and so it's great for doing debugging. Usually what you do is you debug your implementation first using the Pulp solver and then you switch to one of the more advanced solvers like GLPK which is a GNU one, it's a free one and then there are some commercial ones. Obviously this is an area where there's a lot of commercial development going on because writing these solvers is usually very hard and it's very tricky and they're usually very expensive if you want to pay, if you want to buy one of those. The way that you define your problem in Pulp is you have a few objects that you have to set up. So these are the class names I've written down here, so LP problem is the basically the object that you're going to use to basically group everything together. So this defines your problem and it has references to the variables that you're using, the objective function and how you want to optimize things. Then you have to define the XI variables in Pulp as well and you do that using the LP variable class. So you create one of these objects for each XI that you have in your problem. The LP variable objects can be set to say okay, this variable is a float or this variable is an integer, there's also the option of having a binary variable so it just takes values zero and one and it's possible to define a permitted variable value range, which makes it a bit easier so you don't have to define as many constraints as you normally do. Then you have the constraints, there's a class called LP constraints for this and with that variable you can then define using those LP variables, sorry, with that object you can define your constraints using the LP variables and when defining these you basically define a short formula and then the solver will take that formula and then use it in the process of finding a solution. Pulp also has some more advanced LP constrained subclasses for example for elastic constraints, so you can say instead of just saying, okay, the value has to be on that line or in the yellow field, you can say, okay, it's okay if you go like say 10% into the white field, which is handy if you want to do debugging because sometimes you set up the constraints and the solver says, okay, there is no value that is allowed. So obviously you have some problem in there and then you need to make it more flexible, more elastic and you can use those to figure out what's going on. Okay, so what about the documentation? So when I started using Pulp, of course, the first thing I did is I tried to look up the documentation. I found that the documentation is a bit lacking, so it's incomplete, it doesn't actually document everything. It misses some details, there are some tricky things in Pulp that you have to know which probably come from the OR space and if you're not really into OR, then it doesn't feel as pathonic as it may, well, would help for using something in Python. So the best thing that you can do is you just look at the source code, which is really easy to read and there are a few blog posts that are helpful as well because other people, of course, have had the same problem and they figure things out and then wrote things down in the blog post. So what was the inspiration for doing this talk and for looking at conference scheduling as an example? That was a talk from David McEver at PyCon UK last year. There's a video of that talk here. And of course, I was looking for this because of EuroPython, because before EuroPython 2017, we always used manual scheduling, which is a lot of work because we have around 200 sessions to schedule and so I was thinking that maybe this to make things a bit easier to simplify things, to also take criteria into consideration, which we usually basically have to do by hand. So like speaker preferences or like attendee preferences. So we look at the statistics that we get like from talk voting, for example, and then we try to use that to assign the proper rooms. Typical things you have to do in conference scheduling is you have to look at the room sizes and you have to guess basically how popular talk is going to be. Then you have talks which have varying durations. So the talk lengths are different. The slots that you define in your schedule are usually different. So you have longer ones, shorter ones. And then you have some other constraints like, for example, a speaker may only be available for a few days of the conference, not the whole conference. Oh yeah, I forgot one. A speaker cannot give two talks at the same time. And this is something that's very important because we made a mistake there this time. So let's see how you set up a problem in Python. So first of all, you define a few variables. I use dictionaries for this. So you define the rooms, the room sizes, how many seats you have in that room. You define the talks and the talk durations. Then you define the talk slots that you want to use in your schedule. So this is always ordered in as room A, for example. And then the start time in minutes from the beginning of the day and then the length of that particular slot. And then you can go ahead and start with defining a problem. In this case, it's a very simple problem. And you want to maximize it. So you tell it to maximize the objective function. Then you have to create variables. So the way that it works is basically you're not actually optimizing an objective function in this case because in the example I'm not using that. So basically, the objective function is a constant function. So maximizing basically doesn't mean anything. You're mostly interested in finding a solution space, somewhere, a possible solution or a possible schedule that will fill all the constraints. And so what you do is you set up variables which say binary variables which say, OK, the talk on the left in the tuple is assigned to the slot on the right. And you do that for all the talks and all the slots. And this is basically the problem that you want to optimize. You want to say which talk gets assigned to which slot.  So you want all the talks to be in your schedule. And this is how you do it. And this is a very typical pattern. So you take the sum of all the assignments that you have for the talks. And you say, OK, this needs to be smaller or equal than 1 because you have binary variables. This essentially says that you need to assign, sorry, this is a different one. This is actually the one which says that you can only have one talk per slot. And the second one is this one. This is we need to assign all slots. So you take the sum of everything and you say, OK, for each talk, the sum of assignments has to be 1 over all the slots. Then you need to make sure that the talk durations fit the slot lengths that you have available. So you do that using the second one. So again, you sum up all the assignments and you take the slot duration. And then you make sure that the sum of all the slot durations where this talk was assigned is equal to the talk duration. Is this clear so far? Yeah, that's good. Then some speakers may not always be available, like I said. For example, this speaker is only available later in the day, so he usually uses, I don't know, takes longer for breakfast or something. So what you say in this case is you add constraints which basically say, OK, the talk may not be assigned in slots which are too early on that day. So let's say Friday after the social event, right? You don't want to do your talk, you do something like this. So you make sure that this assignment is zero. And then we get to a more complex thing. So you want to make sure that the same speaker is not giving the talk in two places at the same time. This may sound easy at first, so you just say, OK, you just need to make sure that in the same time slot, you don't have only assigned one talk of that particular speaker. But the problem is that the slot durations are usually different throughout the day. So if you look at the schedule, for example, then you can see you have the slots are sometimes longer and shorter, and you have 30-minute talks and 45-minute talks. And then you have trainings, workshops, and so on. And what I marked in red here is the case where we made a mistake in the printed version of the booklet. We assigned Radomir to two slots happening at the same time. So this is something that we want to avoid, of course, because it's fixed now. But in your printed brochure, you can still see this. So how can we handle this case that we have different slot lengths, but we still want to make sure that we don't have any overlaps? Because what can happen, of course, is that the scheduler says, OK, I want to have the speaker do a talk in room one early on, and then just maybe half an hour later, I want another session to start with the same speaker again to start with in room three. So the way that you solve this is you find you basically split up all the slots that you have into smaller blocks. So you take like 15 minutes blocks, for example, which is something that works for your Python. And then you split up all the slots into these blocks. And then you make sure that the speaker never gives a talk in these slots, which happen at the same time. So you make sure that this case does not happen. So what you have to do here is you have to define new variables. So you define the talk block assignment. And then, of course, you need a few helpers, like not going to go into details here. This basically just says, OK, this block is assigned to that slot. And this block starts at that time. And it makes it easier to then define the constraint, which then looks like this. So the first thing that you do is you tie the blocks to the slots that you have to assign. So you say, OK, for example, the light green one on the right in room three, this is three blocks. So you make sure that those three blocks are assigned in the same way as the slot. And then you go ahead and say, OK, for each start time that I have, I want to make sure that the speaker can only be assigned once to that particular start time and block row that you have in your schedule. So this is how you solve these things. And then, of course, you go ahead and you add other constraints you might have. You define your objective function. In this case, I commented that out. So this would be like the happiness function of that particular assignment that you created. You have to define the solver. You can use the PULT one, which is the one that is used if you set solver to none. But you can also use, for example, the GLPK one or one of the commercial ones. And then you run the solver, which is just the problem.solve method call. And then it's important, and this is something I find a bit un-Pythonic about Pulp. You have to actually check the status of the solver. So in case it fails to find a solution, it doesn't raise an exception like what you'd normally expect in Python to happen. It just sets the status to something that's not one. And it took me a bit to find that out because I thought I got a solution because it ended and didn't get an exception. And so I looked at the solution and it didn't look right. So this is something to keep in mind. Right, and then, of course, you want to show your results. So you basically pretty print the results in some way. You have to then access these PULT variables that you define, and you do that using PULT value. And then you just pass it the LP variable value. You have to use this way of doing it so you cannot, for example, just write if and then assigned because for some reason, those LP variables are always true and so this doesn't work. So you have to use this approach to get at the value. Right, and then you get a solution to the problem which in this case looks like that. It's not, this is not very pretty. Of course, you want it to be printed like this so you define some extra helpers for that. And then you can use this on your website. You can then inform the speakers that you found a solution for this and then maybe they come back to you and say, okay, well, this doesn't work out because of this and that.  Of course, what happens when you rerun the solver is it doesn't always give you the same solution. So it's very possible that it gives you a completely different solution the second time you run it. Even more so if you add other constraints. So what you have to make sure is you have to tell the solver to minimize the changes in a schedule that you've already published. And the way to do that is very easy. You just take the existing schedule that you have the existing assignments that you have made and then you add a penalty function. So every time something changes compared to the old schedule that you've created, you raise the penalty value and because it's an optimizer, in that case, of course, you have to use an objective function. Because it's an optimizer, it will try to reduce the penalty value. So it will make as few changes as possible to get everything done. That's one thing that you should probably do when scheduling using pulp. Another thing that you can add is like room assignments. You can use the talk voting results, for example, for that to figure out which room sizes are needed. And you can add that information to the problem as well. You can add tracks so you can tell the scheduler to optimize things in a way that all the topics, the detox of a certain topic, like PyData, for example, are grouped in a way that they happen on the same day and maybe even in the same room, so people don't have to switch. And of course, as always, I mean it's rather easy to just write down everything but basically translating your problem that you have into one of these LP problems is not always, it's not always easy. So you have to think a little differently because it's not programming as we normally do in Python. It's basically declarative what you have to do. So it's more like SQL programming. And so figuring out how to actually write things down is not easy. You have to, you're often run into the situation that the server simply says, okay, there is no solution. So you're basically stuck at that point and then you have to start debugging. Pub does provide a few features for that so you can give names to all these variables. For example, then you get a debug output. You can see where things did not go right and then you can figure out why there was no solution. There is something to consider though in all this, the runtime. And this is a major problem, especially for conference scheduling which is essentially an NPR problem. You can easily run into the situation that as you add more variables to your problem, the runtime increases exponentially and so it takes ages for the solver to actually come to a solution. And then after three days it may tell you, okay, there is no solution, which is of course not very helpful. Right, so in this slide I just summarized basically the few gatchas I already mentioned. Basically the conclusion here is that you should always test drive your solvers. So just use it on a very small problem, make sure it all works, write test cases, make sure that it gives the proper results. Do check your constraints afterwards because in some cases the constraints may, well the solver may have a bug or something and you don't want that. If you want to have things run faster there are some other options that you can use. So I wrote down a few options here. These are solvers which are actually extend things beyond just linear so they can do convex optimizations. So as long as you have a convex function then you can still run the optimizer and find good solutions. This one, the first one is a very fast one and I haven't actually looked at this yet but I think this, someone has, you can see the blog post there and he's basically got results from 10 to 70 times as fast as pulp, which is promising. And I'm almost done. So, and then there's another one which is for, down here for conic optimizations so you can use those as well if you want things to run faster. Right, so what did we do in particular for EuroPython? Well first I wanted to mention that now there is a PyCon after this talk at PyCon UK someone actually sat down and implemented this for PyCon UK. There is a project called conference scheduler and for EuroPython we actually did look into this and try to use this. Unfortunately we ran into exactly the problem that I just mentioned. It has exponential run time and so it took three days to run and basically we just then killed the process and did not wait any longer. So then Alexander who is the chair of the program work group he basically then decided to write his own and what's interesting is that he didn't use an optimizer. He just used some clustering and random shuffling and then just some basically when like the experience from the previous years to make things happen and this is a lot better and it actually works out pretty well. Right, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Okay, thank you, very interesting. Yeah, sorry I screwed it up but I have a good excuse. I think Mark is one of the only speakers we don't have to introduce, so yeah, sorry again. Are there any questions? What is your thought on viewing this specific problem of conferences as a hard mathematical problem versus an art where let's say one conference might decide to put all the headliners in the same slot just so that other speakers would not be robbed of the audience while another conference might want to spread out the headliners so that people would actually go and see the headliners. Well, I mean, you can put all these things into constraints when you do this automatic solving. Of course, when you do like what we do at EuroPython where we put in a lot of experience and we do have certain things, certain considerations that we always take into account when doing the schedule, you can basically try to make everything work out. So, what you just said, you can for example, just putting the headliners first and then having all the other talks after that you can define that as a constraint. So you can define for certain talks that these need to be in certain slots or maybe in certain, I don't know, happen at certain times. Does that answer your question? Perhaps maybe more generally about whether this problem should be approached as mathematics or as art. Well, it is certainly, it's a bit of an art, yes. You have to, but I mean, art in the sense that you have to experiment a lot to find a good way of actually doing the scheduling. We've been experimenting a lot with these things at EuroPython, I mean, EuroPython, this is the 16th EuroPython that we have. So we've tried a lot of things and some failed, some were good, like for example, the concept that we have now where we have the keynotes first and then we, and keynotes on each day, that seems to work out pretty well. We tried now for a couple of years to have trainings, for example, integrated directly into the schedule rather than having them as separate days. That does work well, but it also results in the conference, the talk days, to be a lot more than what some people actually find good. So we're gonna look into all these things, the feedback that we get, and then we're probably gonna make a few changes going forward. Another question. Hi, very interesting. Tom, when it failed to find a solution in your experience in this, was it easy or hard to figure out what was wrong? Did it help tell you what you had to change to find a solution or was that one of the hardest bits? It's the hardest part, yes. If the solvers says, okay, I cannot find a solution, then you're basically very stuck because if you look at the debug logs that these solvers output, first of all, they're very, very long. They're very hard to read. And essentially, I mean, if you, you usually cannot just do it visually because you have so many dimensions, it just doesn't work out. So you essentially have to basically then cut down your problem to fewer sessions that you need to schedule until you find a working one. And then you can take it from there. You can add more sessions and then at some point you find, okay, this, now it failed and you do this kind of backtracking approach to figure out which constraint is actually causing the problem that you have. Another question. How many conference organizers are here? Okay, which conference are you doing? Sorry? Hi, is it like a hackathon conference? No. No? Okay. Very good. So maybe I have a question. Would it be possible to split it up into smaller problems? Like for example, say, okay, here's the first set and we, for example, treat every day as individual days and assign some speakers to that days because you know the numbers already. You have to juggle some a little bit. Or are there any other ideas to split it into smaller problems to overcome this exponential? Yeah, what you can do as to solve this is to, for example, look at the different tracks and then optimize the different tracks individually. This works. And optimizing for the days would also work, but then of course, I mean, you have to in some way make sure that all the talks get assigned and if you split it up too much, then you can run it to the case that you forgot to assign a talk. Something that happens with the EuroPython a lot is that we get talk submissions, we accept them because they look nice and then we find that people cannot come and we get cancellations. And so we often have last minute changes. And doing that, I mean, directly at the conference and figuring out a new kind of schedule and replacing those is not always easy. And so with help of some automation behind it, I think it's actually a better solution. What we did found is like what Alex found is that completely relying on these solutions does not really make sense. So you can use this as basis, but you should then always take this basis and then work from there mostly manually. Okay, so thanks Mark again.


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Heart of the World by H. Ryder Haggard. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Prologue. Don Ignacio. The circumstances under which the following pages come to be printed are somewhat curious and worthy of record. Within the last few years, a certain English gentleman whom we will call Jones, because it is not his name, chants to be employed as the manager of a mine not far from the Usumacinto River, the upper reaches of which divide the Mexican state of Chiapas from the Republic of Guatemala. Now, life at a mine in Chiapas, though doubtless it has some compensations, does not altogether fulfill a European's ideal of happiness. To begin with, the work is hard, desperately hard. And though the climate is healthy enough among the mountains, there are valleys where men may die of fever. Of sport, strictly speaking, there is none. For the forests are too dense to hunt with any comfort and if they were not, the swarms of venomous insects of various degrees that haunt them would make this particular relaxation impossible. Society also, as we understand it, is conspicuous by its absence and should a man chance to be married, he could not well bring his wife into regions that are still very unsettled across forest paths, through rivers and along the brinks of precipices, dangerous and impassable enough to strike terror to the heart of the stoutest traveler. When Mr. Jones had dwelt for a year at the mines of La Concepción, the fact of his loneliness and a desire for acquaintances more congenial than the American clerk of the stores and his Indian laborers came home to him with some force. During the first months of his residence, he had attempted to make friends with the owners of some neighboring fincas or farms. This attempt, however, he soon gave up and discussed. For these men proved to be half-breeds of the lowest class, living in an atmosphere of monotonous vice. In this emergency, being a person of intelligence, Jones fell back upon intellectual resources and devoted himself so far as his time would allow to the collection of antiquities and to the study of such of the numerous ruins of pre-Aztec cities and temples as lay within his reach. The longer he pursued these researches, the more did they fascinate his imagination. Therefore, when he chanced to hear that on the farther side of the mountain, at the hacienda called Santa Cruz, there dwelt an Indian, Don Ignacio by name, the owner of the hacienda, who was reported to have more knowledge of antiguos, their history and relics than anybody else in this part of Mexico. He determined to visit him upon the first opportunity. This indeed he would have done before for Don Ignacio, boasted an excellent reputation, had it not been for the length of the journey to his home. Now, however, the difficulty was lessened by an Indian who offered to point out a practicable path over the mountain, which brought the hacienda of Santa Cruz to within three hours' ride on muleback from La Concepción, in place of the ten hours that were necessary to reach it by the more frequenten road. Accordingly, one day in the dry season, when work was slack in the mine, owing to the water having fallen too low to turn the crushing mill, Jones started. This was on a Saturday, for on the Monday previous he had dispatched a runner to Don Ignacio, announcing his intended visit, and received a reply, a most courteous and well-written letter sending him to pass the next Sunday at the hacienda, where any English gentleman would always be most welcome. As he approached the hacienda, he was astonished to see the façade of an enormous white stone building of a semi-morish style of architecture, having towers and ornamented doorways at either end, and a large dome rising from the center of its flat roof, riding through the milpas or cornfields and groves of cocoa, the coffee bushes, all in a perfect state of cultivation, which covered many acres on every side of the building, Jones came to the gateway of a large patio or courtyard, which grew several gigantic saba trees, throwing their grateful shade over the mouth of a well. From under these trees an Indian appeared and evidently had been watching for his arrival, and taking the horse informed him with many salutations that the Signor Ignacio was at even song with his people in the chapel yonder, according to his habit, but that the prayers would soon be finished. Leaving his horse in charge of the Indians, Jones went to the chapel, and its great doors being open he entered and sat down. So soon as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, he perceived that the place was unusually beautiful, both in its proportions and its decorations. The worshipers also were many, perhaps they numbered 300. Clearly all of them Indians employed upon the estate, and so intent were they upon their devotions that his entry was not even noticed. To his mind, however, the most curious object in the building was a slab of white marble let into the wall above the altar, whereon the following inscription was engraved in Spanish in letters so large that he had no difficulty reading it. Dedicated by Ignacio the Indian to the memory of his most beloved friend, James Strickland, an English gentleman, and Maya, Princess of the Heart, his wife whom first he met upon this spot, pray for their souls of your charity, O passerby. While Jones was wondering who this James Strickland and Maya, Princess of the Heart might be, and whether it was his host who had set up the tablet to their memory, the priest pronounced his benediction and the congregation began to leave the church. The first to pass at stores was an Indian gentleman who Jones rightly took to be downed Ignacio himself. He was a man of about 60 years, but one who looked much older than his age. For sorrow, hardship, and suffering had left their marks upon him. In person he was tall and spare, nor did a slight lameness detract from the dignity of his bearing. His dress was very simple and quite innocent of the finery and silver buttons which have so much attraction for the Mexican mind, consisting as it did of a sombrero of Panama's straw, with a black ribbon in place of the usual gilt cord, a clean white jacket and shirt, a black tie fastened in a bow, a pair of drab-colored trousers, and brown boots of European make. Indeed, the only remarkable thing about downed Ignacio was his face. Never thought, Jones, had he beheld so beautiful a countenance or, to be more accurate, one that gave him such assurance of its owner's absolute goodness and purity of nature. The features were those of a high-bred Indian, thin and delicately cut. The nose, aquiline, the cheekbones and brow prominent, while beneath the latter shown a pair of large and soft black eyes, so tender and trustful in their expression that they seemed almost out of place in the face of a man. He stood by the door of the chapel in the light of the setting sun, leaning somewhat heavily on a stick while the Indians filed past him. Every one of these man, women, and child dueted him with the utmost reverence as they went, some of them, especially the children, kissing his long and finely shaped hand when they bade him good night in terms of affection such as father and called on the saints to guard him. Jones watching them reflected upon the difference of their attitude from that of the crouching servility which centuries of oppression have induced in the race towards any master of white blood and wondered to what his host's influence over them was due. It was at this moment that Don Ignacio turned and saw him. A thousand pardons, Senor! He said in Spanish with a shy and singularly engaging smile as he lifted his sombrero showing his long hair which, like his pointed beard, was almost white. You must indeed have thought me rude, but it is my custom at the end of a week's work to attend worship with the peons. Do not oppress round in noble inglass my children. Also, I did not think that you would arrive before the sun was down. Oh, pray don't apologize, Senor! answered Jones. I have been much interested in watching all your servants at their devotions.   Certainly, Senor! Like the rest of the house it is fine. The old monks who designed it two hundred years ago for this was a great monastery knew how to build and labor was forced in those days and cost nothing. Of course I have repaired it a great deal for those who lived here before me did not trouble much about such things. You would scarcely think, Senor, that in the old days, twenty years ago this place was a nest of highway robbers, smugglers and manslayers, and that these people whom you see tonight or their fathers were slaves with no more rights than a dog. But it is so. Many a traveller has lost his life in this house or in its neighborhood. Once I myself was nearly murdered here. Look at the carving of that altarpiece. It is fine, is it not? Those sapote wood columns date from the time of the old monks. Well, I have known Don Pedro Morando, my predecessor, to tie human beings to them in order to brand them with red-hot irons. To whom does that inscription refer, John's, pointing to the marble slab, which has been described? Don Ignatio's face grew very sad as he answered. It refers, Senor, to the greatest friend I ever had, the man who saved my life at the risk of his own when I came by this limp and one who was dear to me with a love passing the love of women. But there was a woman who loved him also, an Indian woman too, and he cared for her more than he did for me as was right, for has not God decreed that a man should leave his friends, yes, his father and mother even to cleave unto his wife? He married her then, said Jones, who was growing interested. Oh, yes, he married her. And in a strange place and fashion, but it is an old story, Senor, and with your permission, I will not tell it. Even to think of it revives too many painful memories, memories of death and loss and disappointed ambition and high hopes unfulfilled. Perhaps one day if I have the courage and live long enough, I will write it all down. Indeed, some years ago I made a beginning, but it worried me in what I wrote seemed foolishness, so I gave up the task. I have lived a rough life, Senor, and met with many adventures in it, though, thanks be to God, my latter years have been spent in peace. Well, well, it is coming to an end now. And were it not for the thought that my people here may fall into evil hands when I am gone, that would not trouble me. Now, but, Thoms, Senor, you are hungry. And the good Father who has promised to eat with us must ride tonight to celebrate a mass tomorrow at a village three leagues away, so I have ordered supper early. The porter with your bag arrives safely that has been placed in your chamber. The abbot's room it is called, and if you will follow me I will show you a short path to it from the chapel. Then he led the way to a little door in the wall. Unlocking this door he passed up some narrow stairs, at the head of which was a landing place with a window or rather grill, so arranged that, while it was invisible from below, an observer standing there could hear and see all that passed in the chapel. This was the place, said Don Ignacio, where the old abbots kept secret watch upon the monks, and it was here that once I saw a site which I am not likely to forget. Then he passed on through several long and intricate passages till he came to a sitting room filled with handsome old Spanish furniture. Your sleeping place lies beyond, señor, he said, opening another door that led into a large and dreary-looking chamber lighted by heavily barred windows of which the sills were not less than ten feet from the ground. On the walls were frescoes of the last judgment, and the scenes inspired by the bloody drama at the Inquisition grim to look on and somewhat injured by damp, but executed with great power and vivid, if distorted, imagination. Below the center window and reaching two within three feet of the floor was an ancient full-length portrait of one of the abbots of the monastery, life-size and painted in oils upon a panel representing a man of fierce and evil countenance over whose tauntured head the Holy Spirit was shown hovering in the shape of a dove. For the rest of the room was well if lightly furnished and boasted the luxury of squares of matting laid upon the brick floor. I fear that you will think this, but it dismal apartments in your, said Don Ignacio. Still, it is our guest chamber. Moreover, there is a room attached which I thought might be useful to you to write in, should you wish to do so. The people here say that the place is haunted, but I know you Englishmen do not bother about such things. It is not wonderful, however, that they talk thus, seeing that murders were done in this chamber in the time of Don Pedro Moreno. Indeed, he laid a plot to kill me and my friend here, and though he did not succeed in that instance, when I came into possession afterwards I found several skeletons beneath the floor, two of them I remember just where the bed stands now and gave them decent burial. Jones, as in, honor-bound declared himself to be totally indifferent to representation of tortures of the inquisition, memories of departed abbots, skeletons of murdered men beneath the floor, ghosts, and hawk-genus omnie. Still, though he never confessed it to his host, his first night in the abbot's chamber, owing probably to the strong coffee which he had drunk, was not altogether a pleasant experience. In after-days, however, he became well accustomed to the place and, indeed, preferred it to any other room in the hacienda. In contrast to the rude and ill-dressed fare with which Jones was feigned to satisfy himself at the mine, Don Ignatio's supper was a feast worthy of epicurus, especially as it was free from the horrible messes compounded of oil and the inward parts of animals that figures so largely in Mexican cookery. After their meals, cigars and black coffee were handed round, of which the raw materials had been grown on the estate, and never in his life did Jones smoke better tobacco. When the Padre, a gentle and well-informed man, had departed, Jones began to speak of the antiquities of the country. Soon he found that his host's knowledge of the subject had not been exaggerated, seeing that he was even able to decipher hieroglyphic writings that were supposed to be lost, and to give an outline of the history of the races who built the great temples and palaces, whereof so many ruins are to be found in the Palenque district. It is sad to think, said Jones presently, that nothing in which the breath of life remains is left of all this civilization. If only the old legend of the Golden City had hidden away somewhere in the unexplored recesses of Central America were true, I think that I would give ten years of my existence to visit it. It would be a glorious thing to step back into the past to see a system at work and mingle with people of which the world has lost all count and knowledge. For, let the imagination be active as it will, it is practically impossible to reconstruct these things from ruins and traditions. In fact, Don Ignatio, I do not understand how it is that you, who have never seen the antiguos in the flesh, can talk about them so certainly. If I had never seen them, senor, he answered quietly, it would be wonderful. Indeed, you might be justified in setting me down as a teller of tales, but it chances that I have seen the Golden City of Fable and its civilization, and I can assure you that its wonders were far greater than any that have been told of in legend, or even by the Spanish Romancers. What, Gasp Jones, what? Have I been drinking too much of your excellent wine? Am I asleep, or did I hear you say that you, the gentleman sitting before me with your own eyes, had seen the secret city of the Indians? You heard me say so, senor, though I did not in the least expect you to believe me. Indeed, it is because I cannot bear to be thought a liar that I have never said anything about this story, and for this same reason I shall not repeat it to you since I do not wish that one whom I hope will become my friend should hold me in contempt. In truth, I am sorry that I have spoken so freely, but in support of my veracity I will beg you to remember that among the huge forests, wildernesses, in America where no white man has set his foot and once the Indians vanished generations since there is room for many ancient cities. Why, senor, within 200 miles or less of where we sit tonight there exists tribes of Lacondones or unbaptized Indians who have never seen a white man and who still follow their father's faiths. No, senor, that story shall never be told at any rate in my lifetime, for I have nothing to show in proof of it or at least only one thing. What is it? asked Jones eagerly. Oh, you shall see it if you wish, senor, his host answered and left the room. Presently he returned a leather bag from which he extracted a very curious and beautiful ornament. It was a great emerald by far the largest that Jones had ever seen uncut, but highly polished. This stone which was set in pure gold obviously had formed the clasp of a belt and could also be used as a seal for on it, cutting in taglio was the mask of a solemn and death-like human face surrounded by hieroglyphic inscription while on the reverse were other hieroglyphics. Can you read this writing? asked Jones when he examined the ornament.  It is wonderful said Jones restoring the relic with a scythe for he would have given anything that he had down to his shoes to possess it. And now will you not make an exception in my favor and tell me the story?  No? Then shall we walk a little on the roof and look at the view it is pretty by moonlight and the roofs here are wonderful all built of solid stone there is a tradition that the old monks used to dine on them in summer they have a loop-hold wall round them whence that Abbott whose portrait hangs in your sleeping chamber beat back a great attack of Indians whom his oppression stirred into rebellion tomorrow I shall hope to show you round the lands which ever paid me well for my twenty years of cultivation everybody in Mexico runs after mines but its soil is the richest mine of all I knew that and seeing the capacities of the place I sold the other emeralds which went with this clasp they were fine stones but unengraved and therefore of no particular interest and bought it cheap enough now that the country is more settled and I have planted so much its value has become great and will be greater still when all the young cocoa bushes are in full bearing a few years hence there thanks to the saints the stare is done of late my back hurts me when I climb up steps they are as sweet as a nuts in your and the prospect pleasing look the river shines like silver ah how beautiful is God's world it makes me sad to think of leaving it now put doubtless he will provide still finer places for us to work and serve him in where sin and grief cannot enter surely there is room enough yonder and he nodded toward the sky this was but the first of many nights that Jones spent under Don Ignatio's hospitable roof where as the months went by he grew more and more welcome soon he conceived a great affection for the grave sweet natured kindly old Indian gentlemen whose mind seemed to be incapable of any evil thought and whose chief ambitions were to improve his land and do good to all about him more especially to his Indian servants or peons in the beginning of their intimacy they made several expeditions together to inspect ruins in the neighborhood and once Don Ignatio came to stay with him in the mind of a conception where his visit proved to be of the greatest use to Mr. Jones and the company he served one of the difficulties in working this particular mine lay in the scarcity of labor at a word from Don Ignatio this trouble vanished he sent for a cocky K who lived in the mountains and spoke to him and lo within a week 50 stalwart Indians appeared to offer their services at the mine thus affording one of many instances that came to Jones's knowledge of his friend's extraordinary influence among the natives as time went on however these excursions ceased since Don Ignatio's health grew too feeble to allow him to leave the Hacienda at length it was when they had been acquainted for nearly two years a messenger arrived at the mine one morning saying that he was instructed by his master Don Ignatio to tell the senior Jones that he lay dying and would be glad to see him he was to add however that if it should be in any way inconvenient senior Jones must not trouble himself to come for so small a matter as his master had written a letter which would be delivered to him after his death all needless to say senior Jones traveled across the mountains as fast as the best mule he owned would carry him on arriving at the Hacienda he found Don Ignatio lying in his room almost paralyzed and very weak but perfectly clear-headed and much rejoiced to see him I am about to make my last journey my friend he said and I am glad for a late I have suffered a great deal of pain in my back the result of an ancient injury also it is time that a helpless old man should make room for one more active and he looked at his visitor strangely and smiled Jones whose feelings were touched made the usual reply as to his having many months to live but Don Ignatio cut him short don't waste time like that friend he said but listen ever since we knew each other you have been trying to extract from me the story of how I came to visit the city heart of the world and of my friend James Strickland whom thanks be to God I shall see again so soon well I never would tell it to you though once or twice I nearly did so when I saw how my silence chagrined you partly because I pride myself on being able to keep a secret when pressed to reveal it also because I am selfish and knew that so soon as you had heard my story you would cease to interest yourself in a stupid failing old man for who is there that cares about the Rhine when he has sucked the orange oh and there were other reasons for instance I could not have related that history without displaying unseemly emotion and I know that you Englishman despise such exhibitions lastly if I told it all I desired to tell it fully and carefully keeping everything in proportion and this it would have been difficult to do by word of mouth yet I have not wished to disappoint you altogether and I have wished that some record of the curious things which I have seen in my life should be preserved though this last desire alone would not have been sufficiently strong to move me to the task which I finished ten days ago before the paralysis crept into my arm may I trouble you to open that cupboard near the foot of the bed and give to me that pile of writing that you will find in it a thousand thanks here, senor in these pages if you care to take the trouble to read them is set out an account of how in my English friend came to visit the Golden City of what we saw and suffered there and of some other matters which you may think superfluous but that are not without there bearing upon the tail I fear that my skill in writing is small still perhaps it may serve its turn and if not it matters nothing seeing that you seek the spirit not the letter and are not sufficient of a Spanish scholar to be too critical now take the book and put it away for the very sight of it worries me recalling the hours of labor that I've spent on it also I wish to talk of something more important tell me my friend do you propose to stop in this country or return to England oh return to England why should I starve where there are no minds to manage no I'm too poor then would you return if you were rich ask the dying man anxiously oh I do not know it depends but I think that I have been too long away to go to live in England for good I am glad to hear that friend for I may as well tell you at once that I have made you my heir so that henceforth you will be wealthy man as we understand wealth in this country you have made me your heir stammer jones yes why should I not I like you well and know you to be a good honest man I have no relations and no friends and above all I am sure that you will deal justly and gently by my people here for I have watched your bearing towards those who work under you at the mind more ever I have conditions to make which will not be the less binding on you because they are not set out in the will that you should live here yourself and carry on the work that I have begun for so long as may be possible and that if you are forced to sell the place by any unforeseen circumstance or to leave it away by testament you should do so to an Englishman only and one of whom you know something do you accept indeed yes and I know not how to thank you oh do not thank me at all thank your own character and honest face which have led me to believe that I can make no better disposal of my property now go for I am tired but come to me again tomorrow morning after the priest has left so Jones who had entered that room possessed of a hard earned 800 a year departed from it the owner of a property which before long became worth as many thousands annually as any who have visited him at Santa Cruz can testify three days later Don Ignacio passed away peacefully and was laid to rest in the chapel of the Hacienda this then was how the story of the city heart of the world and of Don Ignacio and his friend James Strickland who saw it came into the hands of him whom we have called Jones here follows a translation of the manuscript end of prologue heart of the world by H. Ryder Haggard this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter one how the plot failed I Ignacio the writer of this history being now a man in my 62nd year was born in a village among the mountains that lie between the little town of Pichachalco and Tiapa of all that district my father was the hereditary Khachike and the Indians there loved him much when I was a lad perhaps nine years old troubles arose in the country I never quite understood them or I may have forgotten the circumstances for such things were always happening but I think that they were caused by some tax which the government at Mexico imposed upon us unjustly anyhow my father a tall man with fiery eyes refused to pay a tax and after a while a body of soldiers arrived mounted upon horses who shot down a great number of people and took away some of the women and children of my father they made a prisoner and next day I read him out while my mother and I were forced to look on and sat him on the edge of a hole that they had dug holding guns to his head and threatening to shoot him unless he would tell them a secret which they were anxious to learn all he said however was that he wished that they would kill him at once and so free him from the torment of the mosquitoes which hummed around him but they did not kill him then and that night they put him back in prison where I was brought to visit him by the Padre, Ignacio his cousin and my godfather I remember that he was shut up in a dirty place so hot that it was difficult even to breathe and that there were some drunken Mexican soldiers outside the door who now and again threatened to make an end of us Indian dogs my godfather the priest Ignacio confessed my father in the corner of the cell and took something from his hand then my father called me to him and kissed me and with his own fingers for a few moments he hung about my neck that thing which the priest had taken from him only to remove it again and give it to Ignacio for safekeeping saying see that the boy has it and its story with it when he comes of age now my father kissed me again blessing me in the name of God and as he did so great tears ran down his face then the priest Ignacio took me away and I never saw my father anymore for the soldiers shot him next morning and threw his body into the hole that they had dug to receive it after this my godfather and namesake Ignacio took me and my mother to the little town of Tiapa of which he was priest but she soon died there of a broken heart in Tiapa we lived in the best house in the place for it was built of stone and set upon a bank overhanging a beautiful rushing river with water that was always clear as glass however much it rained which river 100 feet or more below the windows about Tiapa there is little to say except that in those days the people were for the most part thieves and such great centers that my cousin the Padre would not shrieve some of them even on their deathbeds there was a church however where of the roof was overgrown with the most beautiful orchids also the roads were so bad that except in the dry season it was difficult to travel either to or from the town here in this forgotten place I grew up but not without education as might might have been expected seeing that my cousin was a good scholar and did all he could to keep me out of mischief when I was about 15 years of age of a sudden a desire took hold of me to become a priest was in this wise one Sunday evening I sat in the church of Tiapa looking now at the sprays of orchid flowers that swung to and fro in the breeze outside the window and now at the votive pictures on the walls offerings made by men and women who had called upon their patron saints in the hour of danger and had been rescued by them here from the fire there were murderers and here again from drowning they were rude and superstitious dobs but doubtless acceptable to God who could see in them the piety and gratitude of those that out of their penury had caused them to be painted as I sat thus idly my Godfather the good priest began to preach now at chance that two nights before there had been a dreadful murder in Tiapa three travelers and a boy the son of one of them passing from Cristobal to the coast stopped to spend the night at a house near our own with them they brought a mule load of dollars the price of the merchandise that they had sold at San Cristobal which some of our fellow townsmen half breeds of wicked life determined to steal according to the number of ten these assassins broke into the house where the travelers lodged and meeting with resistance they cut down the three of them with machetes and possessed themselves of the silver just as they were leaving one of the thieves perceived the boy hiding beneath a bed and dragging them out they killed him also lest he should bear witness against them now those who had done this in the town still none were arrested for they bribed the officers with part of their booty but my godfather seeing some of them present in the church took for his text the commandment thou shalt do no murder never have I heard a finer sermon indeed before it was finished two of the men rose and crept from the church conscious stricken the scripture described the slaughter of the lad whom their wicked hands had of a sudden hurled into eternity many of the congregation burst into tears I tell this story because it was then for the first time as I thought of the murdered boy who some few days before had been as full of life as I myself that I came to know what death meant I understand that I also must die and depart forever either into heaven or hell I shook as the thought struck me and it seemed to me that I saw death standing at my elbow as he stands today and then and there I determined that I would be a priest and do good all my life in order that I might find peace at the last and escape the fate of the evil on the morrow I went to my godfather's room and told him of my desire he listened to me attentively and answered I would that it might be so my son holding as I do that the things of the world to come out way those of this present earth ten thousand fold but it cannot be for reasons that you shall learn when you are older then when my trust is ended you may make your choice and if you still wish it become a priest five more years passed away during which time I grew strong and active and skilled in all manly exercises also I studied much under the teaching of my godfather who sent even to Spain to buy me books among these books many histories of my own race the Indians and of their conquest by the Spaniards all that had been published indeed of such histories I never tired although it maddened me to read of the misfortunes and cruel oppression of my people who today were but a nation of slaves at length of my twentieth birthday my godfather who now has grown very old called me into his chamber and having locked the door he spoke to me thus my son the time has come when I must deliver to you the last message of your beloved father my cousin and best friend who was murdered by the soldiers when you were a little child and tell you of your descent and other matters first then you must know that you are of royal and ancient blood for your forefather in the eleventh degree was none other than Guautamac the last of the Aztec emperors whom the Spaniards murdered which descent I can prove to you by means of old writings and pedigrees also it is known and attested among the Indians even now do not forget the stock when sprang their kings then by right I am emperor of Mexico I said proudly for in my folly it seemed a fine thing to be sprung from a man who once had worn a crown alas my son the old priest answered sadly in this world might is the only right and the Spaniards ended that forefathers long ago by aid of torture and the noose save that it will earn you reverence among the Indians it is but a baron honor which you inherit with your blood yet there is one thing that has come down to you from your ancestor Guautamac and the monarchs who ruled before him perchance you remember that on the night previous to his death your father set an amulet upon your neck and removing it again gave it to me to keep here is that amulet then he handed me a trinket made of the half of a heart shaped emerald smooth with wear but unpolished that if joined to its missing section would have been as large as a dove's egg this stone was not broken to the bottom the line of separation being so cunningly sawn that no man unless he had one half before him could imitate the other the charm was bored through so as to be worn upon a chain and engraved upon its surface were some strange hieroglyphics and the outline of half a human face what is it I asked the old priest shrugged his shoulders and answered a relic which had to do with their wicked heathen magic rites I suppose I know little about it except that your father told me it was the most valued possession of the Aztec kings and that the natives believed that when the two halves of this stone come together the men of white blood will be driven from Central America and an Indian emperor shall rule from sea to sea and where is the other half father how should I know he answered testily who have no faith in such stories or in stones with the heads of idols graven upon them I'm a priest and therefore your father told me little of the matter since it is not lawful that I should belong to secret societies still some such society exists and in virtue of the ownership of that talisman you will be head of it as your ancestors were before you though as far as I can learn the honor brought them but little luck I know no more about it but I will give you letters to a certain Indian who lives in the district of which your father was kachike and when you show him the stone doubtless he will initiate you into mysteries though I counsel you to have nothing to do with them listen Ignacio my son you are a rich man how rich I cannot tell you but for many generations your forefathers have hidden up treasures for an object which I must explain and the gold will be handed over to you by those of your clan and whose keeping it is it was because of this treasure that your father and your great grandfather were done to death with many others since the rumor of it came to the ears of those who ruled in Mexico who when they failed to force its secret from them tormented and killed them in their rage now this was the message of your father to you concerning the wealth which he and his ancestors had hidden tell my son Ignacio should he live to grow up that there has never departed from our family the desire to win back the crown that guatikmak lost or at least to drive out the accursed Spaniards and their spawn and to establish an Indian Republic to this end we have heaped up wealth for generations that it might serve us when the hour was ripe because of this wealth of which the whisper could not altogether be hid in a land which is full of spies some of us have come to cruel deaths as I am about to die tonight but I shall die keeping my secret and when my son grows up others will rule at Mexico or the matter may have been forgotten at least the gold will be where I left it now say to my son that it is my hope that he will use it in the cause to further which it has been amassed that he will devote his life to the humbling of our white masters and to the uplifting of the race which for centuries they have robbed murdered and enslaved nevertheless say to him that I lay no commands upon him as to these matters saying that he must follow his own about them for I cannot forget that from generation to generation those who went before him have reaped nothing but disaster in their struggle against the white devils whom because of the sins and idolatry of our forefathers it has pleased God to set over us those were your father's words my son which he spoke to me in the hour of his murder you will understand why I said that you must wait before you are determined to be a priest if that is still your wish it can be fulfilled for your father left it to you to follow whatever life you might desire when he had finished speaking I thought for a while and answered so long as my father's blood is unevented I cannot become a priest it is as I feared said the old man with a sigh that cursed talisman which lies about your neck has began its work with you Ignatio and you will tread the path that the others trod perchance to die in blood as they died why cannot man be content to leave the writing of wrongs and the destinies of nations in the hands of the Almighty and his angels because for good or evil the Almighty chooses men to be his instruments I answered within a week from this day some Indians came to Tiappa disguised as porters whose mission it was to lead me to the mountains among which my father had lived and where his treasures still lay hidden bidding farewell to my god-parent the priest who wept when we parted from me I started upon my journey keeping my destination secret as it chanced I never saw him more for a month later he was seized with some kind of calentura or fever and died suddenly the best thing I can say of him is that with one exception there lives no man in heaven above whom I desire so greatly to meet again on the third day of my journey we reached a narrow pass in the mountains beyond which lay an Indian village here my guides took me to the house of one Antonio a to whom the Padre Ignacio had given me letters an old man a venerable aspect who greeted me warmly and made me known to several caciques who were staying with him I knew not why so soon as we were alone in the house one of these caciques after dressing me in words which I could not understand asked me if I had a heart to this I replied that I hope so where out they all laughed then the man Antonio coming to me unbuttoned my shirt revealing the talisman that had belonged to my father the company bowed next the doors were locked and centuries having been posted before them a ceremony began which even now is not lawful that I should describe in detail on this solemn occasion I was first initiated into the mysteries of the order of the heart and afterwards installed as its hereditary chief thus becoming while yet a boy the absolute lord of many thousand men brethren of our society who were scattered far and wide about the land on the day after I had taken the final oaths Antonio handed over to me the treasure that my ancestors hoarded in a secret place which my father had left in his keeping and it was a great treasure mounting to more than a million dollars in value now I was rich both in men and money still following the council of Antonio I abode for a while in the village receiving those who came from every part of Mexico to visit me as holder of the heart and as first in rank among the fallen peoples of the Indians it was during these three months that I made the great error of my life some three miles from the village where I dwelt lived two sisters Indian sisters of noble blood though poor one of them a widow and the other a very beautiful girl younger than myself I chanced that riding past their house upon a certain Sunday evening when most of the inhabitants of the valley were away at a fiesta I heard screams coming from it dismounting from my horse I ran in at the door which was open and saw one of the sisters a widow lying dead upon the ground while two bandits Mexicans were attacking the younger woman drawing my machete I cut down the first of them before he had time to turn then I turned upon the second man with such fury that I drove him back against the wall seeing that his life was in danger he called upon me not to kill him for the sake of a low Indian girl which insult madden me so that I slew him upon the spot and caused his body with that of his companion to be buried secretly it happened that after this the girl whose life I had saved came to dwell in my village where I saw much of her so lovely was she and so clever that soon she won my heart and the end of it was that being headstrong and in love I married her against the advice of Antonio and others of my brethren in order it would have been better for the Indian people perhaps for me also if I had died before I stood at the altar with this woman though for a while she was a good wife and because of her cleverness a great service to me at the time now it must be stated that during all these months I had not been idle the more I thought of them the more wrongs of my countrymen the real owners of the land took hold of my mind till at length they possessed it utterly and I became an enthusiast and a dreamer this was the object of my life to form a great conspiracy which should bring about a rising of the Indians in every province of Mexico upon a given day then when the Spaniards and their bastards the Spanish Mexicans had been stamped out to reestablish the empire of the Aztecs it was a madness perhaps but the madness lurked in my blood my forefathers had suffered from and for it and I think it must have come down to us from our ancestors Guatemala the greatest and the most unfortunate Indian whoever lived where they failed I determined to succeed and strange to say and I went near to success for years I labored traveling to and fro about the land till there was no province where I was not known as the holder of the heart and the chief by blood of the Indian tribes everywhere I strove to rouse the people from their sloth and to win the Cachiques or head men to the cause and I did not strive in vain I used my great wealth to buy arms to gain over the lukewarm with bribes and in many other ways when my fortunes sank low I gathered more for without gold nothing could be done treasures that were buried in the old days were given up to me as a lord of the heart by those who had their secret also many brought me money each what he could spare ordered it against the hour of need for a year or more I was the greatest power in Mexico yet though hundreds were privy to my plot it was so well hidden that no whisper of it came to the ears of the government at length all was ready and so carefully were my plans laid that success seemed certain but the unforeseen happened and I failed thus that woman whose life I had saved my own wife whom I loved and trusted who was bound to my cause and that of her countrymen by every tie human and divine betrayed me and it just before the time fixed for the rising it was agreed that she should be placed as one of whom we could be sure to play the part of a servant in the house of a man who ruled Mexico in those days that she might spy upon him instead of doing so she my wife fell in love with him it is so easy to guess the rest one night but a week before the appointed time I and some five or six others the leaders of our party were seized my companions were made away with secretly but I was brought before the great man who received me alone holding a pistol in his hand I know of your plans friend he said and I congratulate you on them for they were cleverly managed I know also that you have great treasure in gold hidden away and he named the sum that wife of yours whom you were full enough to trust has told me everything not tell me where the money is hidden for this you withhold from her which shows that you are not all together mad now friend I make you this fair offer hand over this treasure and you shall go free of course when the day of vengeance has passed and your sheep have found themselves without a shepherd nor shall you be molested afterwards refuse to do so when you will be to trial and die as you deserve how can you promise for others I asked you're not the only white man who would have fallen I can promise for others first because I am their master and secondly because nobody but myself knows anything of this matter since if I told them I must also share your wealth with them and that friend I mean to keep give it up to me and you may go and plot against my successors and the government of Mexico as much as you as please as you and take your wife with you for ought I care for friend having earned so comfortable a competence I propose to leave a land where as this business proves people and authority are too apt to have their throats cut and be so good as to stand quite still while you are thinking the matter over or I may be forced to shoot you how about my dissociates I asked I believe that three or four of them have been carried off by typhus within the last day or two the prisons here are so unhealthy but I am sure that if the gold is forthcoming no more will sicken then I chose for I thought to myself that I might get more gold but I could never get another life and if I died many must suffer with me and all my hopes for the future of the Indian race would come to naught also I knew that this villain to be a man of his word and that what he promised he would fulfill within ten days he had the money and I was free to begin nor did any of those who were doomed to perish in it learn the tale of the plot that had threatened them I was free but what a freedom was this when I had lost everything save the breath that God placed in my nostrils and perhaps my honor the great house that I had builded was fallen to the ground the monies I had amassed were quite stolen the chief of my companions were dead my credit as a deliverer of the people was gone and my cause had become hopeless all these things had come upon me because of a woman a traitorous whom I had nurtured in my bosom at first I was dazed but when I came to understand I swore a great oath before heaven that for her false sake I would hate and renounce her sex that whatever might be the temptation never again would I look kindly upon women or have to do with one of them in word or thought or deed that oath so far as lay in my power I have kept to this day and I hope to keep through all eternity it may be as what became of my wife I do not know I lifted no hand against her who was flesh of my flesh but she perished the story was known I was forced to tell it clear myself after I escaped from the prison I lay ill for many weeks and when I recovered she was gone others had been betrayed beside myself and doubtless some of them had wreaked fitting vengeance on her what it was I never asked for many years 20 perhaps I became a wanderer now as before the Indians loved me and as lord of the heart in their hereditary kachike in a sense I was still great although but the shadow of power dwelt with me the substance had departed as it departs ever from those who fail from time to time I strove to rebuild the plot but now that I was friendless and without fortune few would follow me thus far so it came about that at length I abandoned the endeavor and lived as best I could I fought in three wars gaining honors therein and took my share in many adventures all of which left me as poor as I had entered on them at times I remembered my desire to become a priest but now it was overlaid to study also my hands were too much soiled with the affairs of the world worrying of the struggle I went back to my village in the mountains and dwelt there a while but this also worried me having nothing to do and I turned my attention to the management of minds it was while I was thus employed as a middle-aged man that I made the acquaintance of James Strickland who was destined to accompany me to the city heart of the world end of chapter one heart of the world by H. Reiter Haggard this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter two the senior Strickland two and twenty years ago I Ignatio visited a village in the state of Tamaulipos named Cumarvo a beautiful place half hidden in pine forests among the mountains I came to this hamlet because a friend of mine one of the brethren of the order of the heart wrote to me saying that there was an Indian in the neighborhood who had in his possession an ancient Aztec scroll which being in picture writing neither he nor anyone else could read this scroll had descended to the Indian through many generations and with it a tradition that it told of a very rich gold mine in the mountains where of the site was lost which had been closed to save it from the grip of Cortez by the order of Guatimoc my forefather whom the Spaniers murdered may their souls be accursed now I had been taught the secret of the picture writing by old Antonio my father's friend when first I was initiated into the mysteries of the heart though it must die with me for I believe that at this hour there is no other man living who can read it this writing the Indian was willing to give up to me as lord of the heart and accordingly having nothing better to do than learning to cummarvo to study it in this matter as in many others I was destined to meet with disappointment at any rate for a while for on my arrival at the house of my friend I heard that the Indian had died of a sudden sickness and that his son could not discover where the scroll was hidden another thing I heard also namely that a white man in Glacy the first who ever visited these parts had come to the village about six months before and was engaged in working some old silver mines on behalf of a company a task that he found difficult for the Mexican owners of the land in the neighborhood being jealous of him and angry because he paid his men a fair wage with striving to prevent Indians from laboring in his mine now the natives of this place from Monday morning to Saturday night were a gentle and industrious people but they had this fault that on Saturday night many of them were accustomed to become drunk on mescal the spirit that is distilled from the root of the aloe then their natures were changed and fierce quarrels would spring up amongst them for the most part about women that ended often enough in bloodshed it chanced that such a fray arose on the night of my arrival at Cumarvo on the morrow I saw the fruits of it as I walked down the little street which was bordered by white flat roofed houses and paved with cobblestones proposing to attend mass in the lime-washed church where the bell rang night and day to scare evil spirits back to hell in the middle of the street lying in the shade of a house were two dead men a handsome Indian girl with a sullen and unmoved countenance was engaged in winding a Serapi or blanket round one of the bodies but the other corpse lay unattended certain stains upon the clothing revealing the manner of its end on a doorstep sat a third man much wounded about the head and face while the barber of the village its only doctor attempted to remove his hair with a pair of blunt scissors so that he might dress the cuts the scene was dreadful but no one took much notice of it for Indian life is cheap and in those days death by violence was even more common in Mexico than it is now on the opposite side of the street an old woman chaffered with a passerby about the price of her oranges while some children with shouts and laughter strove to lasso and drag away a pig that haunted the place and a girl on her way to mass stepped over the uncovered body which lay so quiet in the shade and recognizing it as that of a friend crossed herself as she hurried on what is the cause of this senor I asked the barber I think that I have the honor of addressing Don Ignacio the little man answered and lifting his hands from their work he made a sign showing that he also was a member of the brotherhood though a humble one I thought so he went on as I gave the counter sign we heard that you were going to visit us and I am glad of it for I worry of dressing wounds on Sunday and perhaps you may be able to put a stop to these fights the woman was the cause of it of course senor these are not the first she has brought to their deaths and he nodded at the girl who was wrapping the body in a blanket you see she was going to marry this man and he tapped the Indian whose wounds he was dressing on the shoulder but she took up with that one pointing through the nearest body there upon number one here being drunk with mezcal laid wait for number two and stabbed him dead the girl who was with him ran for number three yonder number two's brother but number one ambushed him and so he was killed also then hearing the noise the village guard came up and cut down our friend here with their machetes but as you see fortunately they did not kill him I heard an anger took hold of me approaching the girl I said this is your doing woman are you not afraid what have it she answered sullenly can I help it if I am pretty and men fight for me also who are you to ask me whether I'm afraid fool cried the barber from the doorstep do you dare to speak thus to the lord of the heart the girl started and replied why not is he then my lord listen girl I said others beside these have died through you how do you know that she answered but what need to ask if you are the lord of the heart you have the evil eye and can read secrets without to you it is you that have the evil eye woman like many other of your sex I said hear me now you will leave this place and you will never return to it for if you do you die also remember that if harm should come to any more men on your account wherever you go I shall know it and you will die there not the government and have no right to kill me she said trying to hide the fear which crept into her black eyes no woman I am not the government but among our people I am more powerful than the government if you do not believe me ask the doctor yonder and he will tell you that I should be obeyed even by people who had never seen me where a troop of soldiers would be laughed at if I say that you are to die you will die in this way or in that for my curse will be on you perhaps you may tumble over a precipice or you may take a fever or be drowned in crossing a river kinsabe I know Lord I know she whispered shivering for now she was frightened do not look so terribly at me spare me this time for I love our God I do not mean to do it but when I put their hearts into a woman's hand how can she help squeezing them especially if she hates men but I did not hate this one and she touched the cheek of the dead indian caressingly I really meant to marry him it is that fellow whom I hate pointing to the wounded lover and I hope that he will be shot else I think I shall poison him you will not poison him woman and though he deserves to die you are worse than he now be gone and remember my words bending down she touched the corpse's forehead with her lips then rising said I kissed your feet lord of the heart and went away without looking behind her nor was she seen again on that village then with a sigh I also was turning to go for it saddened me to think that I should not hold of them a woman should have the power to change these men who are my brethren into savage beasts thirsting for each other's blood I am used had it not been for that other woman who destroyed me and my hope by now I had begun to teach them better at this moment looking up I chanced to see a man such as I had never before beheld standing by my side and gazing at me stories are told of how men and women looking on each other for the first time in certain cases are filled with a strange passion of love of which come what may they cannot again be rid among many misfortunes thanks to be my guardian angels this fate has never overtaken me yet at that moment I felt something that was akin to it not love indeed but a great sense of friendship and sympathy for and with this man which mastering me then is still growing to this hour though its object has for many years been dead perhaps it was the contrast between us that attracted me so much at first since human beings are ever drawn towards their opposites in nature and appearance I, my friend, for whom I write this history as you will remember although you have only known me in my age am tall, thin, and sallow like all my race with a sad expression reflecting the heart within in melancholy eyes very different were the mind and the appearance of James Strickland the Englishman he was a fine man over thirty years of age but he had no relation to his width though somewhat spare and frame and slender and limb his features were as clearly cut as those of an ancient god upon a marble wall his eyes were as blue as the sea and though just now they were troubled at the sight of death merry like the eyes of a boy his curling hair for he had removed his hat in the presence of the dead was yellow as mimosa bloom darkening almost to red in the short beard and about the ears where the weather had caught it and beneath his shirt which was open at the neck the skin showed white like milk for the rest his hands were long and delicate not withstanding the hard work of which they bore traces his glance was quick and his smile the most pleasant that ever I had seen your pardon, senor said the English and good Spanish bowing to me as he spoke but unwittingly I have overheard some of your talk with yonder woman and I cannot understand how it comes about that you, a stranger have so much authority over her I wish that you would explain it to me in order that I might learn how to put a stop to such matters these dead men were two of my best workers I do not know where I shall look to replace them I cannot explain it, senor I answered, returning his bow further than to say I have a certain rank among the Indians on account of which they reverence me still, though I have no right to ask it of a stranger I pray that you will forget any words of mine which may chance to have reached your ears sense of such authority by all means, senor they are already forgotten well, adios this sight is not so pleasant that I wish to study it and replacing his hat upon his head he passed on although my journey proved to be in vain saying that the scroll I came to read had vanished, I lingered in the village of Cumarvo alleging as the reason of my stay a hope that it might be discovered but really, as I believe because I desired to become friendly with this white man as it chanced an opportunity was soon given me to do him a signal service I have stated that there dwelt men of position in this place Mexicans who were jealous of the Englishmen and these people stirred up some discontented minors in his employ to make a plot to murder him saying that if they did so they would win a great treasure which he kept hidden in his house this plot came to my ears through one of the brotherhood and I determined to frustrate it to which end I collected together 20 good men and true and arming them with guns bade them be silent about the matter above all to the English whom I did not wish to alarm the plan of the murderers was at the hour of dawn to attack the house where the senior Strickland slept with four or five servants only and to put all within its walls to death accordingly about one o'clock on the night fixed I dispatched my men by twos and threes instructing them to go round the hills at the back at the back of the house and creeping into the garden with themselves there among the trees till I appeared an hour later I followed them myself without being observed by the spies of the attacking party for a rain fall and the night was very dark arriving in the garden I collected my men and placed them in ambush under a low wall commanding the street of which I knew the murderers must come here we waited patiently till the Cox crew dawn began to break in the east presently we heard a stir in the village beneath as of men marching and in the gathering light we saw the murderers creeping stealthily up the street to the number of fifty or more so great was their fear of the Englishman that they thought it safer to bring many men to kill him also each of the villains desired that his neighbor should be a sharer in the crime will you not wake up the English? asked a man next to me no I answered it will be time enough to wake him when the affair is settled let none of you fire till I give the word now the brigands in the street below men without shame after waiting a little time for the light to grow stronger advance toward the gate looking like a procession of monks for the air was chilling each of them wore his serapi wrapped around his head in their hands they carried rifles and drawn machetes within ten paces of the gate they paused for a minute to consult and I heard their leader a Mexican direct half of them to creep round to the back of the house so as to cut off all escape then I whistled which was the signal agreed upon at the same time covering the Mexican with my rifle almost before the sound had left my lips there followed a report of twenty guns and some fifteen or sixteen of the enemy were stretched upon the ground for a moment they wavered and I thought that the rest of them were going to fly but this they dared not do for they knew that they had been seen therefore they rushed at the wall with a yell firing as they came as they climbed over it we met them with distal shots and machetes and for a few minutes the affair was sharp for they were desperate and outnumbered us still they lost many men in scaling the wall and forcing the gate and with exemption of fourteen who fled and were for the most part caught afterwards the rest of them we finished amongst the flowers and vegetables of the garden just as all was over the Englishman who was a sound sleeper yawning dressed in white and holding a pistol in his hand what is this noise he asked rubbing his eyes and why are you people fighting in my garden go away all of you I shall shoot at you I trust I said bowing that the senior will pardon us for disturbing him in his slumber but this matter could not be settled without some noise may I offer this in your my serapi the air is chilly and he will catch cold in that dress thank you he said putting on the serapi and now perhaps you will explain why you come to spoil my garden by making a battlefield of it then I told him and was astonished to see that as I went on he grew very angry I suppose that I must thank you gentlemen for saving my life he said at last though I never asked you to do it but all the same I think it's shameful that you should have had this fight in my own garden without giving me the opportunity of sharing it kavramba am I a little girl that I should be treated in such a way and of a sudden he burst out laughing and shook me by the hand that day when all the trouble was over and the place had been made tidy the senior Strickland sent a man to ask if I would do him the pleasure to dine with him I accepted and as we sat smoking after dinner having talked of the fight till we were tired of it he spoke thus to me Don Ignatio I owe you my life and believe me I'm grateful for I do not see why you should have risked so much for a foreign stranger I did it because I like you senior I answered also because it is very pleasant to catch the wicked in their own toils those who perished this morning were villains every one of them they came in the hope of plunder for such men without shame will murder human beings for five dollars ahead but they were set on by others who hate you because you treat your Indian and also because they do not wish foreigners here to compete with them and think that you are but the first bird of the flock therefore they thought that it would be a good policy to kill you so as to frighten away others who might follow however that danger is gone by and you need have no more fear for they have learned a lesson which they will not forget huh so much the better then he answered for I have troubles enough to deal with here without being bothered to protect my life against such contemptible vermin now, Don Ignacio I hardly like to ask you and I dare say that you will think the offer beneath contempt but are you willing to accept an engagement I am sadly in need of sub manager one who could control the Indians such a man I am prepared to pay a hundred dollars a month the funds of the company I represent will not allow me to offer more I thought for a while and answered senior the money is not enough to tempt me though it will serve to buy food lodging and cigars but I accept your offer for the same reason that I fought your battles this morning because I like you my best to serve you in your interest still I must warn you that for what I know I may have to leave your service at short notice for my time is not altogether my own I also am the servant of a great company senior and though now I am on leave as it were and have been for many years I may be required at any moment thus it was then that I entered the service of the senior James Strickland or rather of his company in which I continued for something more than a year working very hard for the senior did not spare either me or himself but as the records of these months of fruitless labor could have little interest for you my friend instead of writing of them I will tell you in a few words the history of this Englishman as he told it to me he was of noble blood as might have been seen in his face for he had a right to be addressed as honorable which it would seem means more in England than it does here nevertheless his father was a priest of the heretic church and quite poor though how this came about you being an Englishman will understand better than I it is the privilege of nobles to enrich themselves at the expenses of others of less rank at any rate when James Strickland's father died his son who was then a lad of twenty found that he possessed in the world no more than five thousand dollars this sum being of adventurous mind and sanguine temperament he invested in a ranch in Texas in danger and hardship and lost all his money after this experience having nothing to live on and no friends he was obliged to labor with his hands like a peon and this he did in many ways he broke horses he herded cattle once even for two months he sank so low it makes me angry to write of it as to be forced to wait upon the guests in an inn at Panama then sea drifted to Nicaragua and became mixed up in mining ventures and when first I met him he had been a miner for ten years most of this time he spent managing a mine for an American in the Chantilly's country on the frontier of Honduras where the fever is so bad that few white men can live here it was that he learned to speak Spanish or Mayaton at length after an attack of fever which nearly killed him he left Honduras and came to Mexico where he accepted the management of the silver mine at Cumarvo hitherto had been worked by a Mexican on behalf of its owners who dismissed the road for stealing or in selling it this mine though very rich was hard to deal with profitably because of the water gathered in it in all the months that Senora Strickland had been its captain he was employed in driving a tunnel upward from a lower level in the cliff in order to drain the workings shortly after I came into his service this tunnel was finished for now I was able to obtain plenty of labor which before he had lacked and we began to bring to bank or running as high as 100 ounces to the ton so that for some months all went well then of a sudden the ore body dipped straight downward as though it had been bent when hot and we followed it till the water increased so much that we were unable to carry it out for in those days there were no steam pumps in Mexico such as there are now used for the drying of mines tried to strike another vein but without success then we attempted to pierce a second drainage tunnel at a still lower level but after more than three months labor the rock became so hard that we were obliged to abandon the task now there was nothing to be done except to stop work at the tunnel and report the matter by letter to the owners of the mine employing ourselves meanwhile the smelting of such ore as we had stacked this indeed we needed to do in order to pay wages with the silver seeing that after the first few months the owners ceased to remit us money one evening on returning from the smelting works to the house I found Senora Strickland his chin resting on his hand and an unlighted cigar in his mouth seated at the table on which lay an open letter all through our misfortunes and heavy labor he had never lost heart or forgotten to smile and be married but now he looks sad as a man who has just buried his mother and I asked him what evil thing had happened nothing particular Ignatio he answered but listen here and he read the letter aloud it was from one of the owners of the mine and this was the purport of it that the shaft had become choked because of the incompetence and neglect of the senior that they the owners hereby dismissed him summarily refusing to pay him the salary due and lastly that they held him responsible in his own person for such money as they had lost surely I cried in wrath when he had finished this letter was written by a man without shame and I pray that he may find his grave in the stomachs of hogs and vultures for I forgot myself and my indignation against those that could speak dust of the senior who had slave day and night in their service giving him no rest oh do not trouble Ignatio he said with a little smile it is the way of the world I have failed and must take the consequences had I succeeded there would have been a different story still I think that if ever I meet this man again I will kick him for telling lies about me do you know Ignatio that with the exception of $1,000 which remains to my credit in Mexico I have spent all my own money that I had saved upon this mine and of that $1,800 are due to you for back pay so whatever trade I take to next I shall not begin as a rich man be silent I big of you senior I answered for such words make my ears burn what am I also a thief that I should rob you you who have already plucked like a fowl for the good of others insult me once more by such thoughts and I will never pardon you then I left the house to calm myself by walking among the mountains little knowing what I should hear before I entered it again