The Smuggler Chief: A Novel

by Gustave Aimard

It was, therefore, towards Garakouaïti that the ravisher was proceeding. The two unhappy girls, violently separated from their parents and friends, whom they never hoped to see again, had fallen into a state of prostration which almost deprived them of a consciousness of the frightful position in which the fatal issue of the fight had placed them. Surrendered without defence to the will of a savage, who might at any moment display the utmost violence toward them, they had no human succour to await. They were, therefore, compelled to leave their fate to God, and resign themselves in a Christian spirit to the harsh trials which He inflicted on them.

Employing our privilege of narrator, we will precede the Indian chief, and sketch the character of the country he had to pass through before reaching the city which was his destination. We will at the same time give a description which will enable the reader to form an idea of the manners and customs of the inhabitants, while Tcharanguii is hurrying to arrive, and displaying a certain respect to his prisoners, and lavishing on them attentions which might seem surprising on the part of a man like the formidable chief of the Jaos. What were the reasons that induced Tcharanguii to act in this way?—we may probably know hereafter.

The Cordillera of the Andes, that immense backbone of the American continent, which it traverses through its whole length from north to south, has several peaks forming immense llanos on which tribes reside at an elevation where in Europe all vegetation ceases.

After passing through the Parumo of San Juan Bautista and entering the templada region, which extends for about sixty leagues, the traveller finds himself in face of a virgin forest which is no less than eighty leagues in depth, and some twenty odd in width.

The most practised pen is powerless to describe the unnumbered marvels to be found in that inextricable vegetation called a virgin forest, which is at once strange and fascinating, majestic, and imposing. The most fanciful imagination recoils before this prodigious fecundity of an elementary nature, which is necessarily born again from its own destruction with every new strength and vigour.

Lianas running from tree to tree and from branch to branch, plunge here and there into the soil to rise again further on skywards, and form by crossing and interlacing an almost impassable barrier, as if jealous Nature wished to conceal from profane eyes the secret mysteries of these forests, in whose shadows the footsteps of men have only echoed at rare intervals and never with impunity. Trees of all ages and species grow without order or symmetry, as if they had been sown haphazard like grains of wheat in a furrow. Some, slight and tall, count but a few years, and the ends of their branches are covered by the wide and grand foliage of others whose haughty crowns have seen centuries pass.

Beneath the foliage sweetly murmur pure and limpid streams, which escape from fissures in the rocks, and after a thousand windings are lost in some lake or unknown river, whose free waters have as yet only reflected on their calm mirror the arcana of the solitude. Here are found, pell-mell and in a picturesque disorder, all the magnificent products of tropical regions—the mahogany, the ebony, the satinwood, the oak, the maple, the mimosa, with its silvery frondage, and the tamarind, thrusting out in all directions its branches covered with flowers, fruit, and leaves, which form a dome impenetrable by the sunbeams.

From the vast and unexplored depths of these forests issue at times inexplicable sounds—ferocious howls, mocking cries, mingled with shrill whistles, joyous strains full of harmony, or expressions of fury, rage and terror from the formidable guests that people them.

After resolutely entering this chaos, and struggling hand to hand with this untended and savage nature, the traveller succeeds, axe in hand, in cutting step by step a path impossible of description. At one moment he crawls like a reptile on the detritus of leaves, dead wood, and birds' deposits, piled up for centuries; at another, he leaps from branch to branch at the top of the trees, and travels, so to speak, in the air.

But woe to the man who neglects to have his eye constantly open to all that surrounds him, and his ear strained, for he has to fear, in addition to the obstacles of the vegetation, the venomous bites of snakes disturbed in their retreat, and the no less dangerous teeth of ferocious animals. He must also carefully watch the course of the rivers and streams which he comes across, and settle the position of the sun by day, and guide himself at night by the Southern Cross; for once lost in a virgin forest it is impossible to get out of it; it is a labyrinth of which Ariadne's thread would be powerless to find the issue.