“Hornets?”
“You laugh, Señor. God help us if they had followed us. Did you not hear their murmurings? Some fiend-begotten monkey had disturbed their nest; 237 ’tis to be hoped he has got his reward. Two of my brothers were stung to death last year in less than a minute by a swarm of them; and there is a man of our tribe who is stone-blind through them.”
Asuncion is, to-day, a town of only forty-five thousand inhabitants, and had not then half that number. With the exception of W. P. Robertson and a few other bold traders, Charles Mansfield was probably the only Englishman who had then set foot inside it. He made it his head-quarters for the next two and a half months, and, during that time, made various excursions into the Gran Chaco.
On one occasion he joined a party of Indians who were going out there deer-hunting; and, though there was nothing specially new to him in their methods, he was enabled to examine the country under favourable circumstances. No doubt there was something in the report of its inhabitants being dangerous; for the men with him were hardy, fearless fellows, well used to bearing arms; and even these would not attempt to reach the more distant of the inhabited regions.
To him the hunting was more wearisome than agreeable, for it consisted mainly in crawling along on hands and knees mile after mile—so it seemed—till the sportsmen were within bowshot of a herd, which promptly fled before a single arrow could be launched at them. The crawling began again, and in course of time another or the same herd was reached, and these fled at the first discharge of arrows. The carcases were collected and hidden, and the creeping was begun afresh, but no more herds were overtaken. Then 238 the Indians had recourse to a very common though unsportsmanlike dodge; they concealed themselves, shortly before sundown, by a river where, as the wind was, the deer would not scent them when they came down their usual path to the water. But, further disappointment, a thunderstorm came on, the deer spent the night under the trees, and the Indians went home disgusted.
With the practical eye of a real philanthropist, Mr. Mansfield noted all the advantages of this great and fertile hunting-ground—or as much of it as he was able to see. He returned to England full of a great project for colonising the Chaco and educating the Indians—a scheme which was never carried out. For, only a few months later, while he was performing a chemical experiment, a naphtha-still ignited; and, while pluckily trying to throw it into the street to save the house from catching fire, he sustained injuries which caused his death, at the early age of thirty-six.