To console herself one of them maliciously alluded to the marqués,
“And to think that he’s likely to come along this afternoon with his wife’s lovers! Would you believe that a man could be so blind? No, they must both be in the game....”
And in this fashion all those who had not been invited, and who had no other means of seeing the celebration than by peering through the wire fence, were consoling themselves by making hostile remarks about the marquesa, her friends and her husband.
Celinda rode her horse past the different groups; and she too looked resentfully at the hastily improvised park. Then, perhaps so as not to hear the scandalous remarks of the women, she made off towards the town.
Without for a moment neglecting to keep an eye on the preparation of the tables for the refreshments, Gonzalez was talking with several of his customers, and pointing to the river. He couldn’t have found a better occasion for repeating with professorial gravity some of the things he had heard his compatriot Robledo say about it.
“The Indians had named the river ‘Black’ because of the trouble they had in paddling up its course against the swift current. Then the Spanish explorers named it ‘River of the Willows’ because in former times so many of these trees grew along its banks. There were fewer of them now, but they still constituted the greatest obstacle to navigation, so many were the roots and tree-trunks that rose like ram’s horns to batter in the sides of small craft venturing on these waters. Several centuries passed before it was explored; meanwhile the assertion made by the Indians that it was possible to travel on its waters as far as Chile, and that it formed a link between the Atlantic and Pacific, thus providing a canal far more accessible than the straits of Magellan, was generally believed.
“An English missionary attempted to explore it in the hope that his discoveries would make it possible for England to take possession of the region, and that this waterway would give her a vantage point for attacking the Spanish colonies in the Pacific.
“And then the Spaniards, who had plenty to do because they owned most of America, thought they had better get busy.
“It was Alfarez de la Armada, him they called Villamarino, who, in the last third of the 18th century, when almost the whole of America had been explored and colonized, performed this difficult and obscure task.
“Don Manuel says that Villamarino is the last representative of the great race of Spanish explorers,” asserted the Gallego.