At dawn the troop set out, in the midst of a heavy shower, without eating, and kept on until Don José commanded a halt, in order to kill an old cow which had been purchased at an estancia the day before.
We camped near a collection of mud-huts, surrounded by a gigantic growth of cactus, and called Guardia de la Esquina. It was the first place we had met that approached the dignity of a village; but its qualifications for that title were extremely limited.
Half a mile south of the Esquina a low brick structure, resembling in form two sugar-boxes,—one set on its side, and the other placed perpendicularly against it,—stood alone on the plain. A melancholy story is connected with this structure.
Don B, a rich estanciero, owned many miles of the surrounding country; and the report that he had much money buried in the earth about his brick casa excited the cupidity of the Indians. They came from the south in a large party, ransacked the place, and carried away the hoarded treasure, after cutting the throats of the don, his child, and sixteen peons, all of whom were afterwards buried in a common grave.
While several of the men were slaughtering the cow, the carpenter, with two or three others of the troop, guided by a man sent from the Esquina, visited the hole in which the bodies lay. The earth had fallen in as the bodies had undergone decomposition, for they had been buried in the usual manner of the pampas, without any other covering than the clothes worn at the time of death. On reaching the spot, the gaucho from the town conversed at length with our men; but the substance of his conversation was unintelligible to me. The carpenter threw off his poncho, and commenced digging in good earnest, with a heavy hoe, which he had brought from the carts.
Two little crosses marked the spot where father and child were laid. As his implement sank deep into the earth, a dull, crushing sound announced that it had buried itself in the skull of a man, and the digger drew forth the tool with a human head, greatly decomposed, upon it. The hoe had entered between the jaws. At the sight a sickening sensation came over me; but the Santiagueños, who had left their work, and were grouped around the grave, laughed at my sensations, and scraped away the matted hair from the ghastly head, which was still red with blood, with their knives, which they returned to their sheaths without cleaning. It was a disgusting picture—the natives, with their bare legs and breasts besmeared with the blood of the animal they had just butchered, passing the head from hand to hand, and joking at a calamity that should have excited their pity and commiseration.
The head of the child was also exhumed, and the two were placed in a bag to be taken to Mendoza, where the priests could pray over them; for so long as they remained uninterred in the panteon (consecrated burying-ground), the souls that once animated them would be kept from the land of bliss.
The attack by the Indians had occurred only a short time before our visit, and the prints of their horses’ hoofs were not obliterated from the spot where the butchery was done.
Our caravan continued its course until nine o’clock, and passed Cabeza del Tigre, a place well known as having been the scene of a transaction equally lamentable with the one just recorded. The facts were related to me by a gentleman in whose word I placed great confidence.
Three English merchants who had made large fortunes in California were returning to England, and, having their treasures with them, would not risk a passage around Cape Horn, but landing at Valparaiso, crossed the Cordillera to Mendoza, and there, in as private a manner as possible, engaged for the passage of their property in a large troop of carts bound to Rosario.