"No; it belongs to the family of climbers—that is to say, to that order of birds which have two toes in front of their claws and two behind, like your great friends the parrots."
After we had dressed the skins of the couroucous, and carefully wrapped up the game, we again moved on. The ground became stony, and the descent steeper. At one time I had hoped to find a spring at the bottom of the ravine; but we very soon discovered, to our great disappointment, that we should have to begin climbing again, leaving behind us the oaks and the ceibas, and meeting with nothing but gigantic pine-trees. The pine-needles,[H] which literally carpeted the ground, made it so slippery, that for every step forward we frequently took two backward. We fell time after time, but our falls were not in the least degree dangerous. Sometimes, as if at a signal, we all four rolled down together, and each laughed at his neighbor's misfortune, thus cheering one another. Lucien had an idea of hanging on to Gringalet's tail, who was the only one that could avoid these mishaps. This plan answered very well at first; but the dog soon after broke away by a sudden jerk, and the boy rolled backward like a ball, losing all the ground he had gained, but he at once got up again, quite in a pet with the dog, for whom he predicted a fall as a punishment for his treacherous behavior.
The troublesome pine-needles obliged us again to resort to the stake and lasso plan; l'Encuerado, with his load, strove in vain to keep up with us.
"Can any one understand the use of these horrible trees?" grumbled the Indian. "Why can't they keep their leaves to themselves? Why don't they grow in the plains, instead of making honest folks wear the flesh off their bones in a place which is quite difficult enough to traverse as it is?"
"God makes them grow here," said the child.
"Not at all, Chanito; God created them, but the devil has sown them on these mountains. I have travelled on the large plateau, where there are whole forests of pines, which proves that it was only for spite that they grow on this ascent."
Fortunately Lucien only half believed what the Indian said, and very soon asked me all about it.
"The pines," I replied, "are trees of the North, which never grow well except in cold climates and dry soils. If l'Encuerado had been acquainted with the history of his ancestors, he would have been able to give you some better information about them; he would have known that, in the Aztec mythology, they were sacred to the mother of the gods, the goddess Matlacueye, who, curiously enough, fills the part of Cybele among the Greek goddesses, whose favorite tree was also the pine."
Just at this moment we were passing close to a giant of the forest, which had been broken by a squall of wind; from three or four cracks in its trunk a transparent resin ran trickling out. Lucien, thinking these globules were solid, wished to take hold of one of them; but his fingers stuck to it.