It was the sixth day after that fixed for the journey projected by General Don Juan, and on the road that runs from Currio to Talca, that at about midday, a large party of travellers composed of fifteen men, both masters and peons, and three ladies whose features it was impossible to distinguish, as they were careful to conceal them so thoroughly under their rebozos, was advancing with difficulty, trying in vain to shelter themselves against the burning sunbeams which fell vertically.
No shadow allowed the men or beasts to breathe for a moment; there was not a single tree whose foliage might offer a little refreshment. Ahead of the horsemen a dozen mules, trotting one after the other, and each loaded with two heavy bales, followed with a firm step the bell of the yegua madrina, which alone had the privilege of marching at liberty, and with no burthen, at the head of the caravan.
All our travellers, armed to the teeth, rode in groups behind the mules, and were mounted on those capital Chilian horses which have no equals for speed, and of which we might almost say that they are indefatigable.
The heat was stifling, and with the exception of the area mula! uttered from time to time by the muleteers, in order to stimulate the vigour of the poor brutes, no one said a word. Nothing was audible save the sharp footfall of the animals echoing on the stones, and the clang of the heavy spurs which each rider had on his heels.
The road wound round a vast quebrada along the brink of which it ran, growing narrower every moment, which soon compelled the travellers to ride one by one, having on their right a precipice of more than twelve hundred yards in depth, down which the slightest slip on the part of their steeds might hurl them, and on their left a wall of granite rising perpendicularly to an incalculable height. Still this precarious situation, far from causing a feeling of terror among the persons of whom we are speaking, seemed, on the contrary, to give them a sensation of undefinable comfort.
This resulted from the fact that on this gorge the sun did not reach them, and they were able to refresh their lungs by inhaling a little fresh air, which it had been impossible for them to do during the last three hours. Hence, without troubling themselves about the spot which they had reached, any more than if they had been in a forest glade, they threw off the folds in which they had wrapped themselves, in order to avoid the heat, and prepared to enjoy for a few minutes the truce which the sun had granted them. Gaiety had returned, the muleteers were beginning to strike up those interminable complaints with which, if we may be allowed to use the expression, they seem to keep the mules in step, and the masters lit their paper cigarettes. They rode on thus for about half an hour, and then, after having followed the thousand windings of the mountains, the caravan came out upon an immense plain covered with a tall close grass, of a dark green hue, in which the horses disappeared up to the chest, and on which clumps of trees grew at intervals. The mountains opened on the right and left like a fan, and displayed on the horizon their denuded and desolate crests.
"Baya Pius, gentlemen," one of the horsemen said, as he spurred his horse and wiped his forehead; "we shall halt within two hours."
"I hope so, captain; for I frankly confess to you that I am exhausted with fatigue."
"Stay, Don Juan," the first of the two men continued, as he stretched out his hand in the direction they were following; "do you perceive a little to the left that larch tree wood stretching out at the foot of the mound, down which a torrent rushes?"
"Yes, yes, I see it, Señor Leon," the general, whom our readers have doubtless recognized, answered the captain of the smugglers.