The Cordilleras of the Andes are strange mountains, with which no others in the world could be compared, and they form, so to speak, the backbone of the New World, the entire length of which they traverse. It is in Chili, whose natural frontier they form, that they assume the sternest and most gloomy proportions; raising to the clouds their snow-covered heads, it seems as if it were under the pressure of an omnipotent will, as Ervilla, the poet of Araucania, says, that they allow at certain periods daring travellers to enter their dark gorges and cross their denuded peaks.
The Cordilleras cannot at any season be everywhere crossed, and it is only during four months at the most that at certain spots caravans are enabled to make their way through the snow, escalade the crests of these inhospitable mountains, and descend the opposite sides.
These spots, called passages, are very few in number: they are only three in Chili, and they are quebradas, or gaps, the dried beds of torrents, or streams, through which men, horses, and mules pass with great difficulty, at the expense of extraordinary cost and privations.
The most frequented of these passages is the Parumo of San Juan Bautista, a narrow gorge between two lofty mountains, which can only be reached by a track a yard in width, bordered on the right by a forest, which rises in an amphitheatrical shape, and on the left by a precipice of immense depth, at the bottom of which an invisible stream may be heard murmuring.
This was the road which the caravan was following.
About four in the evening, at the moment when night was beginning to brood over these elevated regions, the travellers came out on a plateau of about forty yards in circumference; before them, nearly at their feet, and half bathed in the early mist of night, were vaguely designed the plains to which they would descend on the morrow, while around them were dark, inextricable forests, which seemed to enfold them.
Wilhelm, in obedience to the orders which he had received from his captain, commanded a halt, and all preparations to be made for the night encampment, as going any further would have been committing great imprudence, especially during the darkness. No one raised any objection, but all dismounted, and began actively unloading the mules and pitching the tent set apart for the Soto-Mayor family.
While some were piling up the bales, and others unsaddling the horses and draught animals, several adventurers, selected by the leader, entered the forest, in order to seek for dry wood necessary to keep up the watch fires.
The duties were thus allotted, in order that they might be completed as speedily as possible, when suddenly a terrible yell was heard, and a band of Indians burst forth from the forest, and rushed at the travellers with brandished weapons.
There was a moment of disorder which it is impossible to describe. The travellers, so suddenly surprised, and for the most part unarmed, offered but a feeble resistance to their assailants; but, speedily obeying the voice of Wilhelm, and excited by the shouts of General Soto-Mayor, and of Don Pedro Sallazar, they collected round the tent in which the three ladies had sought shelter, and arming themselves with any weapon they came across, they bravely resisted the Indians; not hoping, it is true, to emerge as victors from the contest they were sustaining, but resolved to sell their lives dearly, and only yield to death.