Situated at the north of the province of Catamarca, this country, crossed by a branch of the Andes, enjoys a climate temperate in summer, and scarcely cold in winter; a great part of this territory is composed of immense plateaux or llanos, covered with luxuriant vegetation, intersected by numerous streams and considerable rivers, which, not finding any outlet by reason of the want of undulation in the ground, form numerous lakes, without any tide.
It is at the present time one of the most vast, the most thickly populated, and the richest of the Buenos Airean confederation.
From the spot where the travellers had stopped they enjoyed an enchanting view, and saw spread out before them a most charming landscape. At their feet a large and deep river wound like a silver ribbon through the plains, covered with high grass of an emerald green, in the midst of which bounded every moment stags and sheep, playing in troops; wild bulls raised their large heads, armed with formidable horns, and casting about them half timid looks; flights of pigeons and partridges were wheeling in every direction, uttering their sharp or gentle notes, whilst magnificent black swans were playing on the river, and allowed themselves to be carelessly carried along by the current, defiling before the herons that were occupied in searching for fish in the river. Immense forests spread on the background of the landscape, and rose step by step on the far-off slopes of the Cordilleras, whose rugged summits, covered with eternal snow, were mingled with the clouds.
The sun spread profusely its dazzling rays over this primitive scene, and caused the incessantly moistened sand of the shores of the river to sparkle like millions of diamonds.
A profound calm reigned in this desert, so full of animal life, nevertheless, and from the bosom of which rose like a solemn hymn the songs of the innumerable birds perched under the foliage.
Before proceeding farther, and reporting the conversation of our travellers, we will make the reader more intimately acquainted with them, by sketching their portraits in a few lines.
The first—he who did not wish to be known by the title of duke, and who pretended to be a naturalist, calling himself Dubois—was a man about fifty-two years of age, but who appeared more than sixty. His body, long and lean, was slightly bent; his slender limbs were lost, so to say, in the ample folds of his clothing; his features, fatigued by watching and intellectual labour, without doubt, must have been at one time handsome. His forehead was large, but furrowed by deep wrinkles; his black and full eye, surmounted by thick eyebrows, had a fixed and penetrating look, which, when he became animated, it was impossible to support. His nose was straight, his mouth rather large, but furnished with magnificent teeth; his lips, somewhat slender, on which a cold and mocking smile appeared stereotyped. His square chin, with total absence of beard, completed an imposing physiognomy—a little hard, perhaps, but which, when he pleased, he could render extremely prepossessing.
All his person manifested that aristocratic, unctuous, and somewhat sleek grace which distinguishes diplomats and the high dignitaries of the Church. It formed, with the nobility of his gesture, a complete contrast, not only to the costume he had thought proper to adopt, but also with the plebeian manners which he affected, and which, like a part badly learned, he every now and then forgot.
The other traveller was named Émile Gagnepain; he was about thirty or thirty-two years of age, his figure was ordinary, but well and strongly made; his shoulders were large his chest prominent; health characterised his whole person; his arms, on which large muscles stood out like cords, hard as iron, manifested uncommon bodily strength. His countenance indicated frankness and good humour; his regular features, his brown eyes full of intelligence, his laughing mouth, his hair—tawny blonde in colour—curled like that of a Negro, his moustache, oiled with care and coquettishly turned up; his chin shaved, and his bushy whiskers, which reached nearly the corner of his mouth, formed a physiognomy full of frankness and energy, which, at the first glance, attracted sympathy. The rather rude liberty of his movements, his rapid and decided conversation, caused him to be easily set down as one of those privileged beings, as some say—but unfortunate as we say—whom people call artists. In a word, he was a painter. For the rest—a peculiarity that we have forgotten to mention—he had firmly attached to the croup of his horse a box of colours, a large umbrella, an easel, and a maulstick, an apparatus indispensable to all painters, and which, in a country less savage than that in which he was, would have immediately pronounced his profession, notwithstanding his costume of a gaucho.
It was he who first began the conversation. Scarcely had he stretched himself on the grass than, getting up abruptly, and tracing a circle in space with his right arm stretched out before him—