Explore "The Cruise of the Violetta" by Arthur Willis Colton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE city of Portate, on the west coast of South America, when I knew it, had already a distinct flavour of enterprise. Two Northern companies had much to do with its affairs. One of them, The Union Electric, had the trolleys and the street lighting; the other had been longer on the ground, was called The Transport Company, and owned the inland railroad and the principal line of steamers in the harbour. I had charge of The Union Electric plant. Both were large companies operating in numerous South-American cities.
There is a river called the Jiron, which runs down from the mountains, and makes a green strip through a desert land, and so on through Portate to the sea. Even from the sea you can make out the white caps of the Andes; but in the heats of Portate, you decline to believe that the white is snow.