Though very high above the sea-level it was in reality a
"Land of the mountain and the flood".
Hills on hills rose on all sides of him. There were straths or valleys of such exceeding beauty that they gladdened the eye to behold. The grass grew green here by the banks of many a brown roaring stream, and here, too, cattle roamed wild and free, knee-deep in flowery verdure, and many a beautiful guanaco and herds of llamas everywhere. The streams that meandered through these highland straths were sometimes very tortuous, but perhaps a mile distant they would seem to lose all control of themselves and go madly rushing over their pebbly beds, till they dashed over high cliffs at last, forming splendid cascades that fell into deep, dark, agitated pools, the mist that rose above forming rainbows which were never absent when the sun shone.
And the hillsides that bounded these valleys were clad in Alpine verdure, with Alpine trees and flowers, strangely intermingled with beautiful heaths, and in the open glades with gorgeous geraniums, and many a lovely flower never seen even in greenhouses in our "tame domestic England".
These were valleys, but there were glens and narrow gorges also, where dark beetling rocks frowned over the brown waters of streams that rushed fiercely onwards round rocks and boulders, against which they lashed themselves into foam.
On these rocks strange fantastic trees clung, sometimes attached but by the rootlets, sometimes with their heads hanging almost sheer downwards; trees that the next storm of wind would hurl, with crash and roar, into the water far beneath.
Yet such rivers or big burns were the home par excellence of fish of the salmon tribe, and gazing below you might see here and there some huge otter, warily watching to spring on his finny prey.
Nor were the otters alone on the qui vive, for, strange as it may seem, even pumas and tiger-cats often made a sullen dive into dark-brown pools, and emerged bearing on high some lordly red-bellied fish. With this they would "speel" the flowery, ferny rocks, and dart silently away into the depths of the forest.
And this wild and beautiful country, at present inhabited by as wild a race of Indians as ever twanged the bow, but bound at no very distant date to come under the influence of Christianity and civilization, was Benee's real home. 'Twas here he roamed when a boy, for he had been a wanderer all his life, a nomad, and an inhabitant of the woods and wilds.
Not a scene was unfamiliar to him. He could name every mountain and hill he gazed upon in his own strangely musical Indian tongue. Every bird, every creature that crept, or glided, or walked, all were his old friends; yes, and every tree and every flower, from the splendid parasitic plants that wound around the trees wherever the sun shone the brightest, and draped them in such a wealth of beauty as would have made all the richness and gaudiness of white kings and queens seem but a caricature.