The inn was one kept by a Mexican and his Yankee wife; and they, too, told fearful tales of the Apaches’ depredations; and were both convinced that, but for the happy arrival of the waggon, they would have been killed, and their house plundered and burnt.
CHAPTER XVIII
A JOURNEY TO THE GRAN CHACO
The Gran Chaco, or “great hunting-ground” of Western Paraguay, is a land of wooded plains and little patches of primeval forest, about which astonishingly little is known even to-day. White men have never yet explored more than the fringe of it, and it was to an Englishman that the honour fell of being the first European in a period of forty years to venture into the unknown region, as well as of proceeding farther through it than any of his predecessors had done. This was in 1853, when Mansfield made his celebrated journey up the Paraguay River.
Charles Blachford Mansfield, the dearly loved friend of Kingsley, Maurice, Carlyle, and other great thinkers of a bygone generation, was one of those men whose physical bravery and spirit of enterprise are hidden from all but close observers by the shyness natural to a scholar, and by the gentle earnestness of a man who takes life very seriously. While travelling down the South American coast from Pernambuco to Buenos Ayres, he incidentally heard much talk of this mysterious hunting-ground from his fellow-passengers; but he no sooner hinted at his desire to see it than he 227 brought a hail of ridicule on himself. Who but an Englishman would think of trying to go where the Paraguayans themselves dared not venture?
The same doubts or ridicule assailed him when he spoke of his intention to the Spanish skipper of the river steamer on which he took a passage from Buenos Ayres to Corrientes.
“Ask the crew, Señor; some of them are of Indian blood; they will tell you all about the Paraguay,” said he scornfully.
To the quiet scientist, whose pursuits kept him mainly among people of his own social standing, this crew was something of a revelation: Zambos, blacks, Mestizos, Italians, Spaniards, most of them as dirty and lazy and insubordinate as they were high. The negroes and whites had never been farther up than Corrientes, but some of the half-bloods had been as far as Asuncion, and these said unhesitatingly that even if the Englishman could get canoemen to take him up the Paraguay to the capital, every inch of the way was dangerous on account of the uncivilised Guaranis; and that—supposing he reached Asuncion alive—he would not be permitted to enter upon the Chaco.