Note 21 — Chapter VI · APPROACHING THE ANDES
Reading edition
How often, when partaking of the simple fare of our kindly hosts in tropical America, were we forced to compare their never-failing hospitality with that of the Greeks of Homeric times! Then nothing was too good for the honored guest, for he might be a god in disguise, or, if not a god, he was at least a friend of the gods. Like the early Christians, who treated their guests as if they might be angels who had come upon them unawares, our Meta hosts always gave us the best at their disposition, and expressed their regret that they were unable to do more. Their home was ours as long as we chose to remain, and their every act showed that they were pleased to be honored—as they expressed it—by the strangers’ visit.21