Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night,
wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever
live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun
and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun's disks
and stars, ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving,
are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems
almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories,
by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,
REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country
planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator,
and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes,
in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters
you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame;
a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching
over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all
marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering
the equinoctial point at Libra.
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