A horseman of the Cauca in full regalia. In addition to his town garb, coat and all, he would be a social outcast who did not wear a “Panama” hat; gloves; a ruana, or poncho light in color and weight; zamarras, or false trouser-legs of rubber-canvas, and chilenas, or huge wheel-like spurs. His other possessions he carries in his cuchugos, the long, soft-leather pouch on his cantel; and inserts his feet in heavy, fancily carved brass shoe-stirrups
Only a simple little cross, the spokeswoman said, but she, having at that moment to step into the shop to sell two corn-and-cheese biscuits, the others assured us in hoarse whispers that this version was entirely erroneous; it was not a simple cross, but a crucifix with a Cristo attached, just exactly the same that you see to-day in El Milagroso de Buga, only very tiny, chiquitito, in fact. This momentous point in Buga’s history I am forced to leave unsettled, reporting merely what I heard half-whispered in the dark corredor of El Cerrito. The woman took this cross—or crucifix—home and set it up on the wall of her casita. To her surprise and alarm, the crucifix—or cross—began to grow. “Qué le parece!” It grew even during the night! And the noises of its stretching kept her awake. When it had grown to twice its original size, she became so alarmed that she went and told the village curate. The padre scoffed at her story, saying such things were not possible nowadays—O ye of little faith!—for miracles were no longer done. But when she showed him the thing, lo, it was even then growing! So the priest took it away with him—as priests will—and still it grew. It grew until it reached the size you see it to-day in El Milagroso de Buga. Then the padre had an intimation from the Blessed Virgin that a church should be built on the spot where the cajita had been found, and he called all the people together to build it. They put the miracle behind the altar, and there it remained more than two hundred years, in the church which is to-day the carpenter-shop beside El Milagroso. Then, in 1902, the great temple of bricks was raised, for it had long been that those who would worship and be cured by the Miraculous One could not get into the old church. And the Milagroso was moved to the new temple as easily as if it were a mere image of wood, though all the world well knows that it moves only when it wishes, and if it does not, all the horses in the Cauca cannot stir it.
“And is it true that El Milagroso has cured many invalids?” I asked.
All three exploded in the Colombian manner of expressing great world-wide truths, such as, “Is Buga larger than Tuluá?” “Is it colder in Zarzal than in El Cerrito?” Why....
But from an embarrassment of proofs of the miraculous power of the Milagroso of Buga, I have space only for this:
A woman of Sonson had been bed-ridden with rheumatism for twenty years. At last, when they had grown large enough, her sons carried her to Buga and placed her in a chair before El Milagroso. As she prayed, she leaned forward and touched the toe of the Miraculous One, whereupon she at once rose up from her chair perfectly well and walked home to Sonson, many miles away. That, every one in the Cauca valley knows, for it happened only the other year.
“And also,” put in another of the old women, bent on rounding out the story, “El Milagroso can turn a woman young and beautiful again, back to the day of her marriage and the age of fifteen.”
“Eh!” began Hays, sitting up, “Then why ... But, no, the question would be unkind. It is too personal.”
It was in El Cerrito that we first began inquiries about Jorge Isaacs. Those who have sought information of Carlyle in Chelsea, or of Goethe in Frankfurt will be surprised to know that the people of El Cerrito had heard of the author of “María,” though the corner chicha-seller and his neighbors spoke of him with something of the scorn active men of the world always feel for mere men of letters, even though they were not averse to basking in the sunshine of his fame. Some one led us to the little bridge below which the village gossips and washes its scanty clothes, and pointed away to the east. Far across the valley, on the lower skirts of the central range, we could see plainly the “novela casa”—“the story house,” a mere white speck on the distant mountain flank.