Bending over the neck of his galloping steed, he advanced rapidly without looking round him, although the landscape that lay extended before him was one of the most attractive and majestic in those regions.
The river formed the most capricious windings in the centre of a terrain diversified in a thousand strange ways. Here and there on the sandy banks enormous trees might be seen lying, which, dried up by the sun, evidenced, in their washed-out appearance, that they had been dead for centuries. Near the shallow and marshy spots, caymans and alligators wandered about awkwardly. At other places, where the river ran almost straight, its banks were uniform, and covered with tall trees, round which creepers had twined, and then struck root in the ground again, thus forming the most inextricable confusion. Here and there small clearings or marshy spots might be detected in the midst of the dense wood, often piled up with trees that had died of old age. Further on, other trees, which seemed still young, judging from their colour and the solidity of their bark, fell into dust with the slightest breath of wind.
At times, the earth, entirely undermined beneath, drawn down by its own weight, dragged with it the wood which it bore, and produced a crashing, confused sound, which was returned on all sides by the echo, and possessed a certain degree of grandeur in this desert, whose depths no man has ever yet ventured to scrutinise.
Still the stranger galloped on, with his eye ardently fixed before him, and not appearing to see anything. Several hours passed thus: the horseman buried himself deeper in the forest. He had left the banks of the river, and only progressed with extreme difficulty, through the entanglement of branches, grass, and shrubs, which at every step arrested his movements, and forced him to make innumerable turnings. He merely reined in his horse now and then, took a glance at the sky, and then started again, muttering to himself but one word:
"Adelante! (Forward!)"
At length he stopped in a vast clearing, took a suspicious glance around him, and probably reassured by the leaden silence which weighed on the desert, he dismounted, hobbled his horse, and took off its bridle that it might browse on the young tree shoots. This duty accomplished, he carelessly lay down on the ground, rolled a maize cigarette in his fingers, produced a gold mechero from his waist belt, and struck a light.
The clearing was of considerable extent. On one side the eye could survey with ease, through the trees, the widely extending prairie, on which deer were browsing with security. On the other side, the forest, wilder than ever, seemed, on the contrary, an impassable wall of verdure. All was abrupt and primitive at this spot, which the foot of man had so rarely trodden. Certain trees, either entirely or partially dried up, offered the vigorous remains of a rich and fertile soil; others, equally ancient, were sustained by the twisted creepers, which in the course of time almost equalled their original support in size: the diversity of the leaves produced the strangest possible mixture. Others, containing in their hollow trunk a manure which, formed of the remains of their leaves and half-dead branches, had warmed the seeds they had let fall, and offered, in the young shoots they contained, some compensation for the loss of their father tree.
In the prairies, nature, ever provident, seems to have been desirous to shelter from the insults of time certain old trees, patriarchs of the forest which are crushed beneath the weight of ages, by forming them a cloak of greyish moss, which hangs in festoons from the highest branches to the ground, assuming the wildest and most fantastic shapes.
The stranger, lying on his back, with his head resting on his two crossed hands, was smoking with that beatitude, full of ease and sloth, which is peculiar to the Hispano-Americans. He only interrupted this gentle occupation to roll a fresh cigarette and cast a glance around, while muttering:
"Hum! He keeps me waiting a long time."