But let us return to our friends in the little canoe.
“To tell you the truth,” said Pedro to the Indian, “I am deeply disappointed with the result of my mission. It is not so much that men do not see the advantages and necessity for union, as that they are heartless and indifferent—caring nothing, apparently, for the welfare of the land, so long as the wants and pleasures of the present hour are supplied.”
“Has it ever been otherwise?” asked Tiger, with grave severity of expression.
“Well, I confess that my reading of history does not warrant me to say that it has; but my reading of the good Creator’s Word entitles me to hope for and strive after better times.”
“I know not,” returned the Indian, with a far-off, pensive look, “what your histories say. I cannot read. There are no books in my tongue, but my memory is strong. The stories, true stories, of my fathers reach very far back—to the time before the white man came to curse the land,—and I remember no time in which men did not desire each other’s property, and slay each other for revenge. It is man’s nature, as it is the river’s nature to flow down hill.”
“It is man’s fallen, not his first, nature,” said Pedro. “Things were as bad in England once. They are not quite so bad now. God’s law has made the difference. However, we must take things here as we find them, and I’m sorry to think that up to this point my mission has been a failure. Indeed, the last effort, as you know, nearly cost me my life.”
“And what will you now do?” asked Tiger.
“I will visit a few more places in the hope that some of the people may support us. After that, I’ll mount and away over the Pampas to Buenos Ayres; see the colonel, and deliver Manuela to her father.”
“The white-haired chief?” asked Tiger.
“Even so,” replied Pedro.