At length their path led them into a shallow vale thickly overgrown with wild thistles. As they were passing through this, a pistol was fired, and a ball whizzed near the breast of the attendant of Donna Marina. A moment after, the athletic form of Yorika rose from the thicket and sprung like a lion upon the object at which his pistol had been aimed. The Spaniard was immediately pulled from his horse, and a desperate conflict ensued. The superior strength of the Indian, however, prevailed, and he soon pressed the form of his antagonist beneath him. He drew his dirk, and was about to plunge it into the breast of his foe.
At that critical instant, the Spaniard brought his pistol to bear, and discharging it in the breast of the Indian, laid him prostrate upon the earth. Bruised and bleeding, he rose from the ground and made his way to Marina. At first, the girl shrunk back with horror, imagining that it was the victorious Yorika, who had come to claim her as his own. But when her reason was restored, and she learned the truth, she expressed her joy and gratitude alike for the safety of her lover and her own.
Such was one of the tales of my guide, which beguiled the weariness of our journey over the Pampas. He related several narratives respecting the jaguar, which is a kind of tiger infesting the thickets which border upon the road. One day, as we were passing through an immense forest of thistles, ten feet in height, and spreading out like an interminable sea on every side, he pointed to a spot where a traveller, on descending from his horse, had been seized and torn in pieces by one of these furious beasts.
Day after day, we continued our monotonous course. Although it was winter, the weather by no means answered to the common idea of that season. We had occasional rain, but it was seldom colder than during our April or May. Few incidents occurred to break the uniformity of our journey. One day appeared like another, and as we had no objects by which we could mark our progress, we seemed, like a ship in the waste of waters, to stand still in the midst of the shoreless desert. As we stood alone upon the bosom of the mighty prairie, stretching out on every side, and blending itself with the sky, we seemed dwindled into insects. Never have I felt such a sense of nothingness as in the presence of that mighty plain. In measuring myself by the gigantic scale which the Pampas presented, it seemed that I might be blotted from existence like the veriest moth that fluttered in the breeze. It was not until I turned my mind upon my plans and prospects, my hopes and fears, that my bosom began to swell again with those powerful emotions which seem to give importance to our existence and enable us to triumph over the despondency which often besets the heart, and might otherwise sink us in despair.
The sense of loneliness, the yearning for society, the longing to be restored to the sympathy of human beings which beset one in these solitudes, can only be understood by experience. I doubtless felt these the more from my youth and the want of that stern habit of self-reliance which is acquired by men who pursue a life of hazard and adventure. But I was becoming trained in the school of experience, and day by day was learning to sustain myself with my own thoughts, plans and prospects.
We met few travellers upon the road. Four men on horseback, and a company with two vehicles, were all that we encountered in a distance of more than 500 miles. The latter consisted of some five and twenty persons. They had a baggage cart, which was a capacious, rude uncouth-looking vehicle, with cane sides and a roof covered with hides. The body was balanced upon two prodigiously high wheels for the convenience of passing through rivers. The other vehicle was a long coach, called a galera, and resembled the modern omnibus; the seats ran sideways, and the door was at the end. To each of these carriages there were four horses, and a postilion to each horse. Such is the ordinary equipment of travellers upon the Pampas.
The post houses upon the road were miserable tenements, generally of mud, and affording scanty accommodation. The lazy inhabitants seem to offer the commonest civility with reluctance or languid indifference. We occasionally met with huts inhabited by squalid Indians, who seemed sunk in indolence and apathy. They were nearly naked, yet they possessed a gentle and kindly character. The herds of cattle upon the plains furnish them abundance of meat, and they parted with it freely, seeming to be almost indifferent whether they received compensation or not.
At the end of twenty days, we reached the verge of the Pampas, and now began to ascend the highlands, which rise by gradations for the distance of nearly two hundred miles, at the foot of the Andes. Industriously pursuing our journey, we rose step by step, and at last reached a village situated in a deep gorge at the foot of mountains that seemed to reach the skies. Here we sold our horses, and purchased mules, these animals being considered safer in climbing the dizzy precipices, over which our road now lay.
Being duly equipped, and having rested three days, we departed and began to creep up the frowning battlements of the Andes. Sometimes we seemed lost in deep and dark ravines; sometimes we threaded our way amid rocks that lifted their shaggy pinnacles over our heads, which seemed to threaten us with destruction, and sometimes, we reached a lofty peak from which we could see the rugged valley stretched out behind, and still loftier pinnacles rising up to the heavens in front. How striking the contrast between these savage mountains and the level prairie!—yet the emotions they excited were nearly the same; the same overpowering sense of vastness in nature; the same oppressive sense of my own insignificance, visited me here as upon the Pampas. There was, indeed, something exhilarating in the mountain air, and the consciousness of danger frequently experienced as we wound along the edges of the mountains with a yawning chasm of five hundred feet below, imparted something of a romantic interest to our journey. The scenery, too, was often amazingly grand, and when at last we reached the highest ridge of the Andes, and I gazed upon its glittering peaks covered with everlasting snow, I experienced a sensation which I shall never forget. They seemed indeed like bluish-white clouds piled up to the very heavens. They appeared like the ghosts of mountains, dreamy and mist-like, rather than those eternal barriers of snow-capped granite which they really are.
Winding for several days along the devious path, amid the wilderness of rocky peaks and cliffs, we began to emerge from the labyrinth, and the western slope of the Andes soon opened before us. Creeping over a succession of ridges, we finally reached the undulating plain, and from an eminence, we caught a distant view of the Pacific. Proceeding through a country of great fertility we arrived at the place of our destination, thankful indeed that I had reached it in safety.