The capataz gave a heavy sigh; he was, doubtless thinking of Mercedes, and saying to himself that Don Sylvio was a very lucky man.
Don Sylvio, whose heart was contracted, though he knew not the cause, gave a last signal to his betrothed, and soon disappeared among the trees. Doña Concha followed him for a long time with her eyes, for a longer time with her heart; and soon as she was alone, she felt sadness assail her, and she wept and sobbed bitterly.
"O Heaven!" she exclaimed, "Protect him."
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE TOLDERÍA.
On the banks of the Rio Negro, about five and twenty leagues from Carmen, stood the toldería, or village of the Pass of the Guanacos.
This toldería, a simple temporary encampment, like all the Indian villages, whose nomadic manners do not agree with fixed settlements, was composed of about one hundred chozas, or cabins irregularly grouped one after the other.
Each choza was formed of ten stakes fixed in the ground, four or five feet high at the sides, and six to seven in the centre, with an opening to the east, so that the owner of the choza might in the morning throw water in the face of the rising sun, a ceremony by which the Indians implore Gualichu not to injure their families during the course of the day. These chozas were covered with horses' hides sewn together, and always open at the top to leave a free escape for the smoke of the fires in the interior, which fires equal in number the wives of the occupant, as each squaw must have a fire of her own. The leather that served as the exterior wall was carefully dressed and painted of different colours, and these paintings—rendered the general appearance of the toldería more cheerful.
In front of the entrance of the chozas, the lances of the warriors were fixed in the ground. These lances, light and made of flexible bamboos, sixteen to eighteen feet in length, and armed at their extremity with a spear a foot long forged by the Indians themselves, grow in the mountains of Chili, near Valdivia.