At daybreak, our two adventurers, still accompanied by their dog Cæsar, who, whatever he might think, expressed no astonishment at this new kind of life, but trotted seriously beside them, saddled their horses, bade farewell to their host, to whom they gave a few reals in return for his hospitality, and set forward again, looking with earnest curiosity at every object that presented itself to their view, and surprised to find so little difference between the New World and the Old. The life they were beginning, so different from that they had hitherto led, was, for them, full of unexpected charms, and they felt like schoolboys in holiday time. Their lungs seemed to expand to inhale the fresh, sharp breeze of the mountains. Everything, in their eyes, wore a smiling aspect; in a word, they felt they lived.
It is about thirty-five leagues from Valparaiso to Chili, as the people of the country are accustomed to call the capital of the Republic. The handsome, broad, and well-kept up road, which was formerly cut through the mountain by the Spaniards, is rather monotonous, and completely devoid of interest for tourists. Vegetation is rare and poor; a fine and almost impalpable dust arises with the least puff of wind. The few trees, which stand at long distances from each other, are slender, stunted, dried up by both wind and sun, and seem, by their wretched appearance, to protest against the efforts at cultivation which have been made on this plateau, which is rendered sterile by the strong sea breezes and the cold winds of the Cordilleras which sweep over it.
At times may be seen, at an immense height, like a black dot in space, the great condor of Chili, the eagle of the Andes, or the savage vulture in search of prey. At long intervals pass recuas of mules, headed by the yegua madrina, whose sonorous bells are heard to a great distance, accompanying, well or ill, the dismal chant of the muleteer, who thus endeavours to keep his beasts going. Or else it is a guaso of the interior, hastening to his chacra or his hacienda, and who, proudly mounted upon a half wild horse, passes like a whirlwind, favouring you as he goes by, with the eternal "Santas tardes, caballero!"
With the exception of what we have described, the road is dull, dusty, and solitary. There is not, as with us, a single hostelry affording accommodation for horse and foot; these would be useless establishments in a country where the stranger enters every house as if it were his own home. Nothing! Solitude everywhere and always; hunger, thirst, and fatigue must be expected and endured.
But our young men perceived nothing of this. Enthusiasm supplied the place of all they wanted; the road appeared charming to them; the journey they were making, delightful! They were in America; beneath their feet was the soil of the New World, that privileged land, of which so many surprising accounts are given; of which so many people talk, and about which so few know anything. Having landed only a few days before, while still under the impressions of an endless passage, the weariness of which had weighed down their spirits like a mantle of lead, they beheld Chili through the enchanting prism of their hopes; reality did not yet exist for them. What we have here said may appear a paradox to many people; and yet, we are satisfied that all travellers of good faith will acknowledge the exact truth.
At times travelling at a steady foot pace, at others enjoying a laugh and a gallop, our young men, to whom the political events of the Chilian Republic were very uninteresting, and who, consequently, knew nothing of what was going on, arrived quietly within a league of Santiago, at about eleven o'clock in the evening, just at the moment when the ten Chilian patriots were falling on the Plaza Mayor, beneath the balls of General Bustamente's soldiers.
"Let us pull up here," Valentine said cheerfully; "it will give our horses time to breathe."
"Pull up! what for?" Louis asked. "It is late; we shall not find a single hotel open."
"My dear friend," Valentine replied, with a laugh, "you are still a Parisian to the backbone! You forget that we are in America. In that city, of which the numerous steeples dimly stand out on the horizon before us, everybody is long since asleep, and all the doors are closed."
"What shall we do, then?"