The Serranos—mountaineers—have even more wonderful stories to tell than the inhabitants of the llanos. The most remarkable of them are connected with certain caves, which are so numerous in the Eastern Andes, and certain lakes in which, the Serrano assures one, are occasionally observed phenomena of an extraordinary character.
They are firmly convinced, for instance, of a certain witch or malignant sorceress, called Mancarita, who carries away lonely travelers, or those who may have lost their way in the mountains. And they rehearse the tale of an Indian who concealed a bag of silver under a certain water fall near a well-known lake. This is guarded by a serpent or a dragon, but if one will, on St. John’s day, travel in a state of complete nudity, the paramo of Novagote from one end to the other, he will be able to get possession of the hidden treasure. In all these legends, and there are many of them, the Indian has as much faith as have the children of the North in the fairy stories they hear in the nursery.
Then there is that “strange, harrowing, long-drawn cry, human in its tones,” alleged sometimes to be audible in the depths of the tropical forests, for which no satisfactory explanation has as yet been given. The Indians say it is “The Cry of a Lost Soul.” The poet Whittier refers to it in the following verses:—
“In that black forest where, when day is done,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A cry as of the pained heart of the wood,
The long, despairing moan of solitude
And darkness and the absence of all good,
Startles the traveller with a sound so drear,
So full of hopeless agony and fear,