CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
TELLS OF ABSURD, AS WELL AS EVIL, DOINGS, AND WINDS UP WITH A HORRIDSURPRISE.
Whether Pedro's pursuers continued the chase as far as the Indianhunter's hut we cannot tell, for long before noon of the following dayour travellers were far from the hunting-grounds of the gallant savage.
Soon after the usual midday siesta, the canoe, which contained the wholeof the hunter's worldly wealth, was run on the beach near to the spotwhere dwelt his father-in-law with many members of his tribe.
That worthy old man, in a light evening costume consisting of a cottonshirt and straw hat, came down to receive his children, who landed amidmuch noise with their boys and girls and household gods, including thered monkey, the parrot, the flamingo, the fat guinea-pig, the turtle,and the infant tapir. The old chief was quite willing to take care ofthe family during the absence of his son-in-law, and was very pressingin his offers of hospitality to the white travellers, but Pedro refusedto delay more than an hour at the village.
The old man also evinced a considerable amount of curiosity in regard toManuela, and made one or two attempts to engage her in conversation, buton being informed by Pedro that she belonged to a tribe living half-waybetween his hunting-grounds and the regions of Patagonia, and that shedid not understand his dialect at all, he forbore to question her, andsatisfied himself with simply gazing.
After a farewell which was wonderfully affectionate for savages, SpottedTiger embarked in Pedro's canoe, and, pushing off into the river, badethe Indians adieu.
The canoe in which the party now travelled belonged to Tiger, and waslarger as well as more commodious than that in which they had hithertojourneyed, having a gondola-like cabin constructed of grasses andpalm-leaves, underneath which Manuela found shelter from the sun. Inthe evenings Pedro could lie at full length on the top of it and smokehis cigarette. They were floating with the current, you see, and didnot require to labour much at the paddles at that time.
It would weary the reader were we to continue our description of thedaily proceedings of our adventurers in journalistic form. To get onwith our tale requires that we should advance by bounds, and evenflights--not exactly of fancy, but over stretches of space and time,though now and then we may find it desirable to creep or even to standstill.
We request the reader to creep with us at present, and quietly listenwhile Pedro and Tiger talk.
Pedro lies extended on his back on the roof of the gondola-like cabin,his hands under his head, his knees elevated, and a cigarette in hismouth. Lawrence and Quashy are leaning in more or less lazy attitudeson the gunwale of the canoe, indulging now and then in a few remarks,which do not merit attention. Manuela, also in a reclining attitude,rests under the shade of the erection on which Pedro lies, listening totheir discourse. Tiger is the only one on duty, but his labour islight: it consists merely of holding the steering oar, and guiding thelight craft along the smooth current of the river. Pedro lies with hishead to the stern, so that his talk with the Indian is conducted, so tospeak, upside-down. But that does not seem to incommode them, for theideas probably turn right end foremost in passing to and fro.
Of course their language is in the Indian tongue. We translate.
"Tiger," said Pedro, sending a long whiff of smoke straight up towardsthe bright blue sky, where the sun was beginning to descend towards hiswestern couch, "we shan't make much, I fear, of the men of this part ofthe country."
"I did not expect that you would," replied the Indian, giving a gentleturn to his oar in order to clear a mudbank, on which a number ofalligators were basking comfortably.
"Why so, Tiger? Surely peace and good government are as desirable tothem as to others."
"No doubt, but many of them do not love peace. They are young. Theirblood is hot, and they have nothing to do. When that is so, war ispleasant to them. It is natural. Man must work, or play, or fight. Hecannot lie still. Those who are killed cannot return to tell theircomrades what fools they have been, so those that remain are greaterfools than ever."
"I agree with you, Tiger; but you see it is not the young men who havethe making of war, though they generally get all the doing of it, andthe poor women and children take the consequences; it is the governors,whom one would expect to show some sort of wisdom, and recognise thefact that union is strength, and that respect for Law is the only hopeof the land."
"Governors," returned Tiger, in a deep voice, "are not only fools, butvillains--tyrants!"
The Indian spoke with such evidence of suppressed indignation that Pedrotried to look at him.
The aspect of his frowning countenance upside-down was not conducive togravity.
"Come, Tiger," said Pedro, with a tendency to laugh, "they are not alltyrants; I know one or two who are not bad fellows."
"_I_ know one who is a fool and a robber."
"Indeed. What has he done to make you so bitter?" asked Pedro.
"Made us wear spectacles!" replied the Indian, sternly.
"What do you mean?"
"Have you not heard about it?"
"No; you know I have been away in Chili for some time, and am ignorantof much that has been going on in these parts."
"There is in Spain a white man, I know not who," said Tiger, with anexpression of ineffable contempt, "but he must be the chief of the foolsamong the white men, who seem to me to be all fools together."
"Thank you for the compliment," said Pedro, with a laugh.
"This white fool," continued Tiger, paying no regard to his friend'sinterruption, "thought that he would send out here for sale somespectacles--glass things, you know, that old white men look through whenthey cannot see. We Indians, as you know, never need such things. Wecan see well as long as we live. It is supposed that a mistake was madeby some one, for something like a canoe-load of spectacles was sentout--so many that in a hundred years the white men could not have usedthem up. The trader knew not what to do. There was no sale for them.He applied to the governor--that robber of whom I have spoken. He saidto the trader, with a wink of his eye--that sort of wink which the whitefool gives when he means to pass from folly to knavery--`Wait,' he said,`and you shall see.' Then he issued an order that no Indian should dareto appear in his district, or in church during festival-days, _withoutspectacles_! The consequence was that the spectacles were all sold. Iknow not the price of these foolish things, but some white men told methey were sold at an enormous profit."
Although Pedro sympathised heartily with his brown friend in hisindignation, he could not quite repress a smile at the ridiculous ideascalled up. Fortunately the Indian failed to interpret an upside-downsmile, particularly with the moustache, as it were, below instead ofabove the mouth, and a cigarette in the lips. It was too complicated.
"And were _you_ obliged to buy and wear a pair of these spectacles,Tiger?" asked Pedro, after a few silent puffs.
"Yes--look! here they are," he replied, with inconceivable bitterness,drawing forth the implements of vision from his pouch and fixing them onhis nose with intense disgust. Then, suddenly plucking them off; hehurled them into the river, and said savagely--"I was a Christian once,but I am not a Christian _now_."
"How? what do you mean?" asked Pedro, raising himself on his elbow atthis, so as to look straightly as well as gravely at his friend.
"I mean that the religion of such men must be false," growled theIndian, somewhat defiantly.
"Now, Tiger," returned his friend in a remonstrative tone, "that is notspoken with your usual wisdom. The religion which a man professes maybe true, though his profession of it may be false. However, I am notunwilling to admit that the view of our religion which is presented inthis land is false--very false. Nevertheless, Christianity is true. Iwill have some talk with you at another time on this subject, my friend.Meanwhile, let us return to the point from which we broke off--thedisturbed state of this unhappy country."
Let us pause here, reader, to assure you that this incident of thespectacles is no fictio
n. Well would it be for the South AmericanRepublics at this day, as well as for the good name of Spain, if thepoor aborigines of South America had nothing more serious to complain ofthan the arbitrary act of the dishonest governor referred to; but it isa melancholy fact that, ever since the conquest of Peru by Pizarro, theSpaniards have treated the Indians with brutal severity, and it is nowonder that revenge of the fiercest nature still lingers in the breastsof the descendants of those unfortunate savages.
Probably our reader knows that the Peruvian region of the Andes is richin gold and silver-mines. These the Spanish conquerors worked by meansof Indian slave labour. Not long after the conquest a compulsory systemof personal toil was established, whereby a certain proportion of thenatives of each district were appointed by lot to work in the mines.Every individual who obtained a grant of a mine became entitled to acertain number of Indians to work it, and every mine which remainedunwrought for a year and a day became the property of any one who choseto claim and work it. As there were many hundreds of mines registeredin Peru alone, it may be imagined what a host of Indians wereconsequently condemned to a degraded state of slavery.
The labour of the mines was so dreadful that each unfortunate on whomthe lot fell considered it equivalent to his death-warrant. And thatthere was ground for this belief is proved by the fact that not morethan one in six of the Indians condemned to the mines survived thetreatment there inflicted. Each mitayo, or conscript, receivednominally two shillings a day. But he never actually received it. Onhis fate being fixed by lot, the poor fellow carried his wife andchildren to the mines with him, and made arrangements for never againreturning home. His food and lodging, being supplied by his employers,(owners?) were furnished at such an extravagant rate that he alwaysfound himself in debt at the end of his first year--if he outlived it.In that case he was not allowed to leave until his debt was paid, which,of course, it never was.
Usually, however, the bad air and heavy labour of the mines, coupledwith grief, told so much on men accustomed to the fresh air and freelife of the wilderness, that death closed the scene before the firstyear of servitude was out. It is said that above eight millions ofnatives have perished thus in the mines of Peru.
We have shown briefly one of the many phases of tyrannical crueltypractised by the conquerors of the land. Here is another specimen. Atfirst there were few merchants in Peru, therefore privilege was grantedto the Spanish corregidors, or governors of districts, to import goodssuitable for Indians, and barter them at a fair price. Of course thispermission was abused, and trade became a compulsory and disgracefultraffic. Useless and worthless articles and damaged goods--razors, forinstance, silk stockings, velvets, etcetera--were forced on Indians whopreferred naked feet and had no beards.
The deeds of the soldiers, miners, and governors were but too readilycopied by the priests, many of whom were rapacious villains who hadchosen the crucifix as their weapon instead of the sword. One priest,for instance, besides his regular dues and fees, received during theyear as _presents_, which he _exacted_ at certain festivals, 200 sheep,6000 head of poultry, 4000 guinea-pigs, and 50,000 eggs, and he wouldnot say mass on those festival-days until a due proportion of thepresents was delivered. And this case of extortion is not told of oneof the priests of old. It occurred in the second quarter of the presentcentury. Another priest summoned a widow to make declaration of theproperty left her by her husband, so that he might fix the scale of hisburial fees! He made a high demand. She implored his mercy, remindinghim of her large family. He was inexorable, but offered to give up hisclaim if she would give him her eldest son--a boy of eight--to be soldas a slave or given away as a present. (It seems that the senhoras ofthose lands want such boys to carry their kneeling carpets.) The civilauthorities could not be appealed to in this case. There was noredress, so the widow had to agree to give up her son! Doubtless bothin camp and in church there may have been good men, but if so, they forman almost invisible minority on the page of Peruvian history.
In short, tyranny in every form was, and for centuries has been,practised by the white men on the savages; and it is not a matter ofwonder that the memory of these things rankles in the Indian's bosomeven at the present time, and that in recent books of travel we read ofdeeds of diabolical cruelty and revenge which we, in peaceful England,are too apt to think of as belonging exclusively to the days of old.
But let us return to our friends in the little canoe.
"To tell you the truth," said Pedro to the Indian, "I am deeplydisappointed with the result of my mission. It is not so much that mendo not see the advantages and necessity for union, as that they areheartless and indifferent--caring nothing, apparently, for the welfareof the land, so long as the wants and pleasures of the present hour aresupplied."
"Has it ever been otherwise?" asked Tiger, with grave severity ofexpression.
"Well, I confess that my reading of history does not warrant me to saythat it has; but my reading of the good Creator's Word entitles me tohope for and strive after better times."
"I know not," returned the Indian, with a far-off, pensive look, "whatyour histories say. I cannot read. There are no books in my tongue,but my memory is strong. The stories, true stories, of my fathers reachvery far back--to the time before the white man came to curse theland,--and I remember no time in which men did not desire each other'sproperty, and slay each other for revenge. It is man's nature, as it isthe river's nature to flow down hill."
"It is man's fallen, not his first, nature," said Pedro. "Things wereas bad in England once. They are not quite so bad now. God's law hasmade the difference. However, we must take things here as we find them,and I'm sorry to think that up to this point my mission has been afailure. Indeed, the last effort, as you know, nearly cost me my life."
"And what will you now do?" asked Tiger.
"I will visit a few more places in the hope that some of the people maysupport us. After that, I'll mount and away over the Pampas to BuenosAyres; see the colonel, and deliver Manuela to her father."
"The white-haired chief?" asked Tiger.
"Even so," replied Pedro.
During the foregoing conversation Quashy had thrust his fat nose down ona plank and gone to sleep, while Lawrence and Manuela, having nothingbetter to do, taught each other Spanish and English respectively! And,strange though it may appear, it is a fact that Manuela, with all herquick-witted intelligence, was wonderfully slow at learning English. ToLawrence's intense astonishment and, it must be confessed, to his nosmall disappointment, the Indian maiden not only made the same blundersover and over again, and seemed to be incapable of making progress, buteven laughed at her own stupidity. This somewhat cooled his admirationof her character, which coolness afforded him satisfaction rather thanthe reverse, as going far to prove that he was not really, (as how couldhe be?) _in love_ with the brown-skinned, uneducated, half-savage girl,but only much impressed with her amiable qualities. Poor fellow, he wasmuch comforted by these thoughts, because, had it been otherwise, howterrible would have been his fate!--either, on the one hand, to marryher and go and dwell with her savage relations--perhaps be compelled topaint his visage scarlet with arabesque devices in charcoal, and go onthe war-path against the white man; or, on the other hand, to introducehis Indian bride into the _salons_ of civilisation, with the certaintyof beholding the sneer of contempt on the face of outraged society; withthe probability of innumerable violations of the rules of etiquette, andthe possibility of Manuela exhibiting the squaw's preference for thefloor to a chair, fingers to knives and forks, and--pooh! the thing wasabsurd, _utterly_ out of the question!
Towards sunset they came to a part of the river where there were a goodmany sandbanks, as well as extensive reaches of sand along shore.
On one of these low-lying spits they drew up the canoe, and encamped forthat night in the bushes, close enough to the edge to be able to see theriver, where a wide-spreading tree canopied them from the dews of night.
Solemn and inexp
ressibly sad were the views of life taken by Lawrencethat night as he stood by the river's brink in the moonlight, while hiscompanions were preparing the evening meal, and gave himself up to thecontemplation of things past, present, and to come,--which is very muchlike saying that he thought about nothing in particular. What he feltquite sure of was that he was horribly depressed--dissatisfied withhimself, his companions and his surroundings, and ashamed in no smalldegree of his dissatisfaction. As well he might be; for were not hiscompanions particularly agreeable, and were not his surroundingsexquisitely beautiful and intensely romantic? The moon in a cloudlesssky glittered in the broad stream, and threw its rippling silvertreasures at his very feet. A gentle balmy air fanned his cheek, onwhich mantled the hue of redundant health, and the tremendous puffs andlong-drawn sighs of the alligators, with the growl of jaguars, croak andwhistle of frogs, and the voice of the howling monkey, combined to fillhis ear with the music of thrilling romance, if not of sweetness.
"What more could I wish?" he murmured, self-reproachfully.
A tremendous slap on the face--dealt by his own hand, as a giantmosquito found and probed some tenderer spot than usual--reminded himthat some few things, which he did not wish for, were left to mingle inhis cup of too great felicity, and reduce it, like water in overproofwhisky, to the level of human capacity.
Still dissatisfied, despite his reflections, he returned to the fireunder the spreading tree, and sat down to enjoy a splendid basin ofturtle soup,--soup prepared by Tiger the day before from the flesh of aturtle slain by his own hand, and warmed up for the supper of thatevening. A large tin dish or tureen full of the same was placed at hiselbow to tempt his appetite, which, to say truth, required no tempting.
Manuela, having already supped, sat with her little hands clasped in herlap, and her lustrous eyes gazing pensively into the fire. Perhaps shewas attempting to read her fortune in the blazing embers. Perchanceengaged in thinking of that very common subject--nothing! If Pedro hadsmoked the same thing, it would have been better for his health andpocket; but Pedro, thinking otherwise, fumigated his fine moustache, anddisconcerted the mosquitoes in the region of his nose.
Quashy, having just replenished the fire until the logs rose two feet ormore from the ground, turned his back on the same, warmed his handsbehind him, and gazed up through the over-arching boughs at the starrysky with that wistfully philosophical expression which negroes are aptto assume when their thoughts are "too deep," or too complex, "forutterance."
Spotted Tiger continued to dally with the turtle soup, and seemed loathto give in as he slowly, with many a pause between, raised the huge ironspoon to his lips.
No one seemed inclined to break the silence into which they had sunk,for all were more or less fatigued; and it seemed as if the very brutesaround sympathised with them, for there was a perceptible lull in thewhistling of the frogs, the howling monkeys appeared to have gone torest, and the sighing alligators to have subsided and sunk, so that thebreaking of a twig or the falling of a leaf was perceptible to thelistening ear.
Things were in this state of profound and peaceful calm when a slightrustling was heard among the branches of the tree above them.
The instant glare of Quashy's eyes; the gaze of Manuela's; the cock ofPedro's ear, and the sudden pause of our hero's spoon on its way to hislips, were sights to behold! The Indian alone seemed comparativelyindifferent to the sound, though he looked up inquiringly.
At that moment there burst forth an ear-splitting, marrow-shrivellingblood-curdling yell, that seemed to rouse the entire universe into astate of wild insanity. There could be no mistaking it--the peculiar,horrid, shrieking, only too familiar war-whoop of the painted savage!
Quashy staggered back. He could not recover himself, for a log hadcaught his heel. To sit down on the fire he knew would be death,therefore he bounded over it backwards and fell into Lawrence's lap,crushing that youth's plate almost into the region where the soup hadalready gone, and dashing his feet into the tureen!
Lawrence roared; Manuela shrieked; Pedro sprang up and seized hisweapons. So did Lawrence and his man, regardless of the soup.
Tiger alone sat still, conveying the iron spoon slowly to his lips, butwith a peculiar motion of his broad shoulders which suggested that theusually grave savage was convulsed with internal laughter.
"Ghosts and crokidiles!--what's dat?" gasped Quashy, staring up into thetree, and ready to fire at the first visible object.
Tiger also looked up, made a peculiar sound with his mouth, and held outhis hand.
Immediately a huge bird, responding to the call, descended from the treeand settled on his wrist.
Quashy's brief commentary explained it all.
"Purrit!"
It was indeed the Indian's faithful pet-parrot, which he had taught thusto raise the war-cry of his tribe, and which, having bestowed its entireaffections on its master, was in the habit of taking occasional flightsafter him when he went away from home.