According to his own story, he was a good man, a rich man, and a friend to humanity, and to foreigners in particular, he had the same hypocritical way of talking as the natives of Mendoza, and I came to the conclusion that they had mutually assisted each other in their education.
After scrutinizing the various objects about him, he at length asked me, with a grunt, to lend him four reals. Of course I refused him; but I was curious to learn more of him, and my refusal was not made in the most decided tone possible. He smiled grimly, and commenced telling a long story of his beautiful house (?) far away in Patagonia, where I should always be a welcome visitor. He had vast numbers of ostriches and guanacos running about his grounds, all of which should be at my disposal if I would but accompany him back to the pampas. He liked foreigners, because they were braver than the gauchos. Pausing in the midst of his harangue, he gave me a punch in the ribs, and asked to be accommodated with three reals. I again refused. Taking up the thread of his story, he continued at great length, finally promising to bring me a tame guanaco when he returned to Mendoza. Here followed another poke, and a request for two reals, then one, and finally promising to be content with a medio. I gave it to him, and he left me.
The circus performers intended leaving Mendoza for San Juan, a town lying one hundred and fifty miles to the north, and earnestly wished me to accompany them. To me it mattered little whether I remained four months in Mendoza or any other place; but before accepting their invitation I called upon the correo, or Chilian courier, to see if I could possibly cross the Cordillera with him. The correo was away on the passage, and the postmaster-general believed that he was detained by the temporales that had been raging, and would not return for several weeks.
In crossing the mountains during the winter season, four men form the correo. One carries the mail, another wood, another provisions, &c. They do not leave either side oftener than once a month, and are sometimes a whole month in performing the journey, as they are frequently shut up in the snow-huts that are scattered along the road for many days at a time.
The casuchas, or snow-huts, are scattered along the trail at irregular distances. These huts are built of brick with an entrance so constructed as to be above the drifting snow. The post party left Mendoza on mules, or horses, and proceeded into the mountains as far as the depth of snow would permit. Peons then took back the animals, leaving the correo to continue the journey on foot. This was the custom at the time of my visit. Upon reaching the main chain of the Andes, the state of the atmosphere was carefully studied, and if the result proved favorable they ascended the Cordillera.
When upon the western side of the chain, the party sometimes adopted an ingenious method for facilitating their progress. Each man carried with him a square piece of hide, upon which he sat, and descended the inclined surfaces with much ease and great rapidity. After reaching Santa Rosa, the first town upon the western side, the correo mounts a horse, and gallops to Santiago, the capital of the republic, which is about twenty leagues from the village.
Upon the 5th of June the correo had not returned; and as there was no possibility of my crossing into Chili, I consented to go to San Juan, and set out about dusk with the circus manager and one of his men for a quinta outside the town, from which we were to start the next morning. The owner of the quinta had agreed to take charge of the company’s mules and baggage, and act as guide to our party while crossing the dreary travesia. We passed, by moonlight, the burial-ground on the outskirts of the town, and reached the muleteer’s house, where we found the family sleeping in the yard,—men, women, and dogs, promiscuously.
As I probably shall not in this volume again have occasion to refer to the town of Mendoza, I will here speak of its destruction, which, as my readers doubtless are aware, occurred in 1861, from an earthquake. This most terrible catastrophe, in which thousands of human beings lost their lives, has rarely found a parallel in the history of the western hemisphere.
A recent traveller, who visited the place after the calamity, says, in describing the ruins,—
“I arose at an early hour, and sallied forth to see and contemplate the ruins of the doomed city.