Amazon River. He had made captive for romance the outlaws of old Spanish California, the priests and bandits of Mexico, the scouts of Fremont, dusky Indian heroines, and the motley multitude of the gold-seekers. He had been the champion of oppressed peoples—the Southern Confederacy, the native American tribes, the Jews of Russia and Palestine, the Cubans, the Boers, the yellow men and the Mexicans in California. And then, to widen his horizon at sunset, he had threaded the golden straits and had sailed "on and on" to the Arctic Seas, to Hawaii, to the Orient, chanting as he sailed, every ready for fresh adventure, ever in love with light, color, and movement, ever himself the romantic troubadour, the picturesque incarnation of the spirit which pervades his poems.
