"I cannot abandon my donkey; it is a famous brute, which has done me good service."
"That need not trouble you; it can follow with the baggage mules."
The Indian gave a nod of assent, but made no further reply. In a few minutes he was mounted, and the caravan continued its march. The capataz alone did not appear to place any great confidence in the guide so singularly met.
"I will watch him," he said in a low voice.
The march went on the whole day without any fresh incident, and the next day they reached the Rio Gila. The banks of this river contrast by their fertility with the desolate aridity of the plains that surround them. Don Sylva's journey, though recommenced at the moment when the sun, arrived at its zenith, pours down its burning beams perpendicularly, was only an agreeable promenade of a few leagues, beneath the dense shade of tufted woods which grow with an amount of sap unknown in our climates.
It was nearly three o'clock when the travellers saw before them the colony of Guetzalli, founded by the Count de Lhorailles, and which, although it only had a few months' existence, had already attained a considerable size. This colony was composed of a hacienda, round which were grouped the labourers' huts. We will devote a few words to it.
The hacienda was built on a peninsula nearly three leagues in circumference, covered with wood and pasture, on which more than four thousand head of cattle grazed peacefully, returning at night to the parks adjoining the house, which was surrounded by the river, forming an enceinte of natural fortresses. The tongue of land, not more than eight yards in width, attaching it to the mainland, was commanded by a battery of six heavy guns, in its turn surrounded by a wide, wet ditch.
The house, surrounded by tall embattled walls, bastioned at the angles, was a species of fortress capable of sustaining a regular siege with the eight guns mounted on the bastions which guarded the approaches. It was composed of a huge main building, one story high, with a terraced roof, having ten windows in the frontage, and flanked on the right and left by two buildings, running out at right angles, one of which served as a magazine for grain and maize, while the other was occupied by the capataz and the numerous employés of the hacienda.
Wide steps, furnished with a double iron balustrade, curiously worked, and surmounted by a veranda, formed the approach to the count's apartments, which were furnished with that simple and picturesque taste which distinguishes the Spanish farms of America.
Between the house and the outer wall was a vast garden, exquisitely laid out, and so covered with bushes that at four paces' distance it was impossible to see anything. The space left free behind the farm was reserved for the parks or corrals in which the animals were shut up at night, and a species of large court, in which the matanza del ganado, or slaughter of the cattle, was performed once annually.