Pinta

“ The Pinta was commanded by Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and the Nina by his two brothers, Francis Martin, and Vincent Yanez Pinzon. It was difficult to man the ships, sailors generally being frightened at the enterprise, but at last the captains succeeded in getting together one hundred and twenty men, and on Friday, August 3rd, 1492, the admiral crossing at eight o'clock in the morning the bar of Saltez, off the town of Huelva, in Andalusia, adventured himself with his three half-decked caravels upon the Atlantic waves. ”

“ The inhabitants of Palos have all left the shore and are absorbed in the business of welcoming the great man; and there is no one left to notice or welcome the Pinta. For it is she that, by a strange coincidence, and after many dangers and distresses endured since she had parted company from the Nina in the storm, now has made her native port on the very same day as the Nina. Our old friend Martin Alonso Pinzon is on board, all the fight and treachery gone out of him, and anxious only to get home unobserved. ”

“ Perhaps something (he reminded us of the rudder before the Canaries) had gone wrong. Captain Pinzon may have thought the island was the nearer land, or he may have returned to Cuba, but more to the north than were we. He looked for the Pinta. again in a reasonable time. In the meantime let it alone!
So soon as the sea allowed, Vicente Pinzon came in his boat to the Santa Maria, but he seemed as perplexed as we. He did not know his brother’s mind. But Martin Pinzon forever and always was a good sea captain and a Castilian of his word, knowing what was proper observance to his Admiral. ”

“ But Diego, who had seen him often, could not feel as they did, and thought him one of the noblest and most dignified of men.
He retired to the cabin, taking his pilot with him, and followed by Martin Alonzo, Francisco Martin, who was pilot of the Pinta, and by Garcia Fernandez. There must have been a serious consultation between them; for they all looked grave when they came out. When the admiral had returned to his vessel, Martin Alonzo had all hands called aft, and they went readily enough; for they were hot to hear what had been decided. ”

“ The Niña, too, had to be repaired; for she was a bad sailer and kept the other two vessels back; so it was determined to change her lateen sails to square ones. But she did not have to lay up for that; it being sufficient if she lay at anchor in smooth water. All this having been determined on, Martin Alonzo called his men aft and said to them:
“As you very well know, my men, the Pinta is unseaworthy by reason of her broken rudder and her leaky hull. We have tried to find a vessel to replace her, and have not been able to do so. Now, we must careen her and put her in order.” ”

“ The Pintados are a courageous and warlike race; they have continually waged war on both land and sea. They bore their ears in two places and wear beautiful ornaments, not only in their ears, but also around their necks and arms. Their dress is neat and modest, made generally of cotton, medriñaque, or silk (which they get from China and other places) . They are greatly addicted to the use of a kind of wine which they make from rice and from the palm-tree, and which is good. Very rarely do they become angry when drunk, for their drunkenness passes off in jests or in sleep. ”

“ The mountaineers make iron lance-points, daggers, and certain small tools used in transplanting rice. They are very anxious to possess artillery, of which they cast a little, although but poorly. They are all a miserable race. Although the Pintados behave better to the Spaniards, yet, whenever they find one alone, they kill him, and the Moros do the same whenever they can. ”

“ Deeply buried from human eyes;
"And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!"
Then Pintal paced briskly to and fro a few turns across the narrow floor of his tent, and presently stopping, said,--his first cheerfulness, with its unwonted smile, returning,--
"But I must tell you why I should be happy today. I have a letter from my brother Miguel, who is Secretary to the Legation at the Porte. He has leave of absence, and is happy with his dearest friends in Florence. ”

“ This residence is in the province called Pintados, in which the greater part of Ours have lived and are working for the salvation of the Indians, although ordinarily not more than three priests and four brothers labor there. The situation is extremely convenient, because all the other residences carry on their work from it as a center. ”

“ Some conceal themselves in the chamber, and these become the Datos; others in the kitchen, and these become the slaves. The rest go down the stairs and become the people.
1 Pintados, or Bisayas, according to a native word denoting the same, must be the inhabitants of the islands between Luzon and Mindanao, and must have been so named by the Spaniards from their practice of tattooing themselves. Crawfurd (“Dict.” 339) thinks these facts not firmly established, and they are certainly not mentioned by Pigafetta ”

“ The natives, who had always believed in the power of the ointment, set up a shout when they saw what had happened, and the magician, knowing that his trade in ointment was ruined, slunk away, and never came back to demand payment for his broken vase.
Like all African travellers, Major Pinto had a great deal of trouble with his men, who were all native Africans. They were constantly stealing his property, getting drunk, and running away. He had, however, one faithful man, who was brave, honest, and devoted to his master. ”

“ I have ventured to call Pindar the most genuine of the early Greek poets; and in the sense, that his extant works have come down to us on the whole less tampered with and less modernised than any others, I think this is true. In reading Pindar, we feel a well-founded confidence that we have before us the very words of one who lived at a known time and place. In Pindar too we have a poet sui generis. Standing widely apart from,—we can hardly say between,—the epic on one side and the dramatic on the other,—the lyric poetry of Pindar has the impress of a peculiar and quite unique genius. ”

“ They are to be attached to a nobler chariot—the ideal car of the Muses. Their victory has, as it were, "sublimated their essence," and raised them into ideal beings, suitable for the ideal task demanded of them. So then through the gates of Song, whose bars fly back to admit them, the spiritualised mules and the spiritual chariot must pass, and bear the poet far away to Pitanè.
Pitanè was in sober fact a suburb or parish of Sparta; but Pindar's present purpose was not a visit to the city beside the Eurotas. ”

“ Pinto having thus secured the artificers in his cause, neglected nothing to keep the other conspirators firm to their purpose; exhorting every one separately to hold himself in readiness against the signal of attack; begging them at the same time to engage the assistance of their own particular friends, on pretence of some private quarrel, without letting them into the true state of the business; judging, truly, that there are many people endowed with great courage sword in hand, who, in cold blood, are very unfit to be trusted with a great and important secret. ”

“ The Greaser admits he may have busted off the fastenin' of that single blinder down Pinto's nose. Anyhow, Pinto runs a few short jumps, and then stops, lookin' troubled. The next minute he hides his face on the Greaser and there is a glimpse of bright, glad sunlight on the bottom of Jose's moccasins. Next minute after that Pinto is up in the grandstand among the ladies, and there he sits down in the lap of the Governor's wife, which was among them present. ”

“ He had a sort of odd-lookin' white eye, but a heap of them pintos has got glass eyes, and so no one thought to examine his lookers very close, though it was noticed early in the game that Pinto might be lookin' one way and goin' the other, at the same time. He'd be goin' on a keen lope, and then something or other might get on his mind, and he'd stop and untangle hisself from all kinds of ridin'. Sometimes he'd jump and snort like he was seein' ghosts. A feller on that horse could have roped antelopes as easy as yearlin' calves, if he could just have told which way Mr. ”

“ The admonitions which Pindar addresses to Hiero are to cultivate a calm serenity of mind, after the cares and toils by which he had founded and extended his empire, and to purify and ennoble by poetry a spirit which had been ruffled by unworthy passions. Even when the skill of the victor is put in the foreground, Pindar in general does not content himself with celebrating this bodily prowess alone, but he usually adds some moral virtue which the victor has shown, or which he recommends and extols. ”

“ Pindar hurries over this and the remaining points of the legend at a bound. "Time draws close," he cries—"I must hasten on. I know of a shorter path, and cannot linger on the beaten track!" The serpent was slain, he tells us, "by guile," and forthwith he conducts Jason on his homeward voyage, lingering for a moment to tell how the Argonauts touched at Lemnos, and how there their comrade Euphemus became parent of the princely race that now rules Cyrenè. ”

“ Glorious with sunlight and with stars, touched by rise and set of day with splendor, he shines when other lesser lights are dulled. Pindar among his peers is solitary. He had no communion with the poets of his day. He is the eagle; Simonides and Bacchyl'ides are jackdaws. He soars to the empyrean; they haunt the valley mists. Noticing this rocky, barren, severe, glittering solitude of Pindar's soul, critics have not infrequently complained that his poems are devoid of individual interest. ”

“ Practically, then, our evidence for the facts of Pindar's life consists of four biographies, compiled fully fourteen hundred years after the poet's death, and forming the latest links in a chain of tradition which cannot be traced beyond the school of Aristotle. It is impossible to accept such evidence without hesitation; but we have, in fact, no other. At least we may receive it as evidence, if not to the actual facts of Pindar's life, yet to the general impression produced by that life on the minds of succeeding generations. ”

“ Pinto; "but you were right. That— that person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no love lost between us, as you say: and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. I hate him, voyez-vous? I hated him alife; I hate him dead. I hate him man; I hate him ghost: and he know it, and tremble before me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence— and why not?—I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was dressed?"
"In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder. ”

“ In this ode Pindar, who, together with other bards, was probably at this time a guest at the royal table, sets forth in a beautiful strain of poetry the glory and superiority of the Olympic contest, in which Hiero has been victorious, to all other games; he then digresses to the history of Pelops, son of Tantalus, who formerly possessed Pisa and Olympia, and is now honoured as a hero within the sacred grove Altis. Returning to his principal subject, he concludes the ode with good wishes for the continued prosperity of the victor. ”

“ When Pindar depreciates the singer who is a mere pupil of others; when he says that "one training will not form us all," or lift the uninspired man to the heights of poetry; may he not be hinting that the young Bacchylides—a new competitor for Sicilian laurels—was only a feeble echo of Simonides? In an ode written for Hiero in 474 B.C. Pindar expresses the hope of "surpassing rivals" (ἀμεύσασθ' ἀντίους, Pyth. i. 45) : he touches on the baneful power of envy and slander,—but adds, "yet forego not noble aims ”

“ And certain obvious merits and characteristics of his poetry were pointed out by every professor of literature in the schools of Greece or Rome, and furnished a supply of materials for a panegyric, which any writer who chose could work up and expand at pleasure. But we find nothing to make us believe that Pindar was widely read among men of average culture among the ancients. When a poet is really popular in any age, the general literature of the age is certain to supply proofs of his popularity. ”

“ In Pindar, passing from Ibycus and Anacreon, we ascend at once into a purer and more healthful atmosphere, fraught, indeed, with passion and pregnant with storm, but no longer simply sensual. Taken as a whole, the Odes of Pindar, composed for the most part in the honour of young men and boys, both beautiful and strong, are the work of a great moralist as well as a great artist. ”

“ Pinto had spar'd no pains in discovering who were, and the Number of the Disaffected, which he daily endeavoured to encrease; he rail'd against the present Government sometimes with Heat, at other times with Caution, always accommodating himself to the Humour of the Company which he was in: tho indeed so great was the Hatred which the Portuguese bore the Spaniards, that there was no need of Reserve in complaining of them. He would often remind the Nobility what honourable Employments their Forefathers had borne, when Portugal was govern'd by its own Kings. ”

“ No less delicately does Pindar hint his disapproval of another defect in Hiero's character, a tendency to avarice. He enlarges, not on the evil effects of the vice, but on the advantages of the virtue which is its opposite, and contrives simultaneously to pay tribute to the magnificence of Hiero's position:—
"Wealth is thine, and bounty more may its powers unfold:
Sovereign thou of mighty nation, and tower-crowned town! ”