"My brother Cari-Lemon is welcome to the lodge of Meli-Antou," the squaw replied, with a rather sweet smile. "Mahiaa is his slave."
"Will my mother permit me to kiss her feet?" said Leon.
"My brother will kiss my face!" the chiefs wife replied, as she offered her cheek to Leon, who respectfully touched it with his lips.
"Will my son take maté?" Mahiaa continued. "Maté relieves the traveller's parched throat."
The introduction was over. Meli-Antou sat down, while his wife ordered her slaves to unload the llama and lead it to the corral, after which the maté was served. Leon, while imbibing the favourite beverage of the Spaniards and Indians, looked at the house in which he now was. It was a rather spacious square room, whose whitewashed walls were adorned with human scalps, and a rack of weapons, kept remarkably clean. Folded up puma skins and ponchos were piled up in a corner, until they were arranged as beds. Wooden chairs, excessively low and carved with some degree of art, furnished this room, in the centre of which stood a table, only some fifteen inches above the ground.
This interior, which is very simple, as we see, is reproduced in all the Indian lodges; which are composed of six rooms. The first of these is the one which we have just described, and the one in which the family generally keep. The second is set aside for the children. The third is used as a bedroom. The fourth contains the looms, which are made of bamboo, and display an admirable simplicity of mechanism. The fifth contains provisions of every description; and lastly, the sixth is set apart for the slaves. As for the kitchen there is none, for the food is prepared in the corral, that is to say, in the open air. Chimneys are equally unknown, and each room is warmed by means of an earthenware brasero.
The household duties are entrusted to the slaves, who work under the inspection of the mistress of the house. These slaves are not all savages; many of them are unhappy Spaniards made prisoners of war, or who have fallen into the ambushes which the Indians incessantly set for them.
The lot of the latter is even more sad than that of their companions in slavery, for they have not the prospect of being free some day, and must expect to perish sooner or later as victims to the spite of their cruel masters, who avenge themselves on them for the numberless vexations which they suffer at the hands of the Spaniards. It is truly in this harsh captivity that a man can apply to himself the words which Dante inscribed over the gates of the Inferno, "Lasciate ogni speranza."
Meli-Antou, to whom accident had led Leon, was one of the most respected chiefs among the warriors of Garakouaïti: he had lived among Europeans, and the experience which he had acquired by passing through countries remote from his home, had rendered him more polite and sociable than the majority of his countrymen.
He informed Leon that he was the father of four sons, who had joined the great Moluchos army, and were fighting against the Spaniards: he told him of the journeys he had made, and seemed anxious to prove to the medicine man, Cari-Lemon, that his great courage as a warrior, and his military virtues, did not prevent him recognising all that there was noble and respectable in science.