THE PARUMO DE SAN JUAN BAUTISTA.
The Cordilleras of the Andes are strange mountains, with which no
others in the world could be compared, and they form, so to speak, the
backbone of the New World, the entire length of which they traverse.
It is in Chili, whose natural frontier they form, that they assume
the sternest and most gloomy proportions; raising to the clouds their
snow-covered heads, it seems as if it were under the pressure of an
omnipotent will, as Ervilla, the poet of Araucania, says, that they
allow at certain periods daring travellers to enter their dark gorges
and cross their denuded peaks.
The Cordilleras cannot at any season be everywhere crossed, and it is
only during four months at the most that at certain spots caravans are
enabled to make their way through the snow, escalade the crests of
these inhospitable mountains, and descend the opposite sides.
These spots, called passages, are very few in number: they are only
three in Chili, and they are quebradas, or gaps, the dried beds of
torrents, or streams, through which men, horses, and mules pass with
great difficulty, at the expense of extraordinary cost and privations.
The most frequented of these passages is the Parumo of San Juan
Bautista, a narrow gorge between two lofty mountains, which can only be
reached by a track a yard in width, bordered on the right by a forest,
which rises in an amphitheatrical shape, and on the left by a precipice
of immense depth, at the bottom of which an invisible stream may be
heard murmuring.
This was the road which the caravan was following.
About four in the evening, at the moment when night was beginning to
brood over these elevated regions, the travellers came out on a plateau
of about forty yards in circumference; before them, nearly at their
feet, and half bathed in the early mist of night, were vaguely designed
the plains to which they would descend on the morrow, while around them
were dark, inextricable forests, which seemed to enfold them.
Wilhelm, in obedience to the orders which he had received from his
captain, commanded a halt, and all preparations to be made for the
night encampment, as going any further would have been committing
great imprudence, especially during the darkness. No one raised any
objection, but all dismounted, and began actively unloading the mules
and pitching the tent set apart for the Soto-Mayor family.
While some were piling up the bales, and others unsaddling the horses
and draught animals, several adventurers, selected by the leader,
entered the forest, in order to seek for dry wood necessary to keep up
the watch fires.
The duties were thus allotted, in order that they might be completed
as speedily as possible, when suddenly a terrible yell was heard,
and a band of Indians burst forth from the forest, and rushed at the
travellers with brandished weapons.
There was a moment of disorder which it is impossible to describe.
The travellers, so suddenly surprised, and for the most part unarmed,
offered but a feeble resistance to their assailants; but, speedily
obeying the voice of Wilhelm, and excited by the shouts of General
Soto-Mayor, and of Don Pedro Sallazar, they collected round the tent
in which the three ladies had sought shelter, and arming themselves
with any weapon they came across, they bravely resisted the Indians;
not hoping, it is true, to emerge as victors from the contest they were
sustaining, but resolved to sell their lives dearly, and only yield to
death.
The combat then assumed gigantic proportions; the white men knew that
they had no quarter to expect from their ferocious enemies, while
the latter, whose great number heightened their boldness, and who
counted on an easy victory, exasperated by the resistance offered
them, redoubled their efforts to finish with the white men, whom they
execrated.
The fight became with each instant more terrible; Chilians and Indians
were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, rending each other like wild
beasts, and howling like tigers when a combatant fell on either side.
The issue of this frightful butchery was impossible to foresee, when
suddenly several shots were fired, and a band of horsemen rushed
desperately into the thickest of the fight. They were Leon, and his
adventurers, who, after a futile search, when returning to join their
friends, heard the sound of the battle, and hurried up to take their
part in the danger, and claim the right of dying with their comrades.
It was time that this succour arrived, for the Chilians who, crushed
by numbers, did not feel their courage give way, but the moment
approaching when they would fall not to rise again in front of the tent
which they had undertaken to defend with the last drop of their blood.
Hence the unforeseen and almost providential arrival of the captain
changed the aspect of the fight.
The Indians, astonished at this unforeseen attack, and not knowing
what enemy they had to combat, hesitated for an instant, which Leon
took advantage of to redouble his blows. A ray of hope animated the
Spaniards, who regained their courage, and their resistance threatened
to become fatal to the Indians; but this triumph, alas! was of short
duration.
All at once a Redskin of colossal height rushed to meet the smuggler
captain, with the evident intention of fighting him. When the two
adversaries faced, they looked at each other with attention, each in
his heart doing justice to the elegant form and muscular appearance of
his opponent.
As frequently happens under such circumstances, Indians and Spaniards
suspended the blows they were dealing one another, in order to be
spectators of the combat in which Leon was about to engage with the
Indian, who appeared to be one of the chiefs of the band. On the issue
of this struggle the fate of the combatants on either side might
depend. By a common agreement, the Redskin threw his axe on the ground
and Leon his gun. Then after drawing their machetes, the two men looked
at each other attentively, and suddenly making a bound forward, seized
each other round the body, but neither could make use of his knife, as
each had seized his enemy's right arm with his left hand. Activity and
skill could alone triumph.
For some minutes they could be seen intertwined like serpents, with
frowning brows, haggard eyes, and set teeth; they writhed in a hundred
ways, and tried, to throw each other, but in vain. The panting breath
of both combatants could be heard escaping from their heaving chests
like a whistle. The perspiration poured down their faces, and a whitish
foam gathered at the corners of their mouths.
At length the Indian chief uttered a savage yell, and, collecting all
his strength in a supreme effort, threw Leon, who dragged him down with
him. Both rolled on the hardened snow. A long cry of joy burst from the
Indians, and a cry of despair from the Spaniards; and, as if they had
only expected this denouement to renew the combat, they rushed upon
each other with fresh strength.
In the midst of this dark forest, which was plunged into a sort of
demi-obscurity, these scenes had something awful and sinister. The
groans of the ladies, and the cries of agony from the men, who fell
before the bullets and the blade, echoed mournfully far and wide; add
to these lugubrious sounds the plaintive howling raised by the animals
at the sight of the fire which was devouring the rest of the baggage,
and the reader will have an idea of the sad picture which we are
drawing.
In the meanwhile the Indian who had thrown Leon had set his knee on his
chest with ferocious delight, and was brandishing his knife; but all
was not yet over for Leon; by a movement rapid as thought he hurled
away his foe, who fell, letting his knife slip from his grasp. It was
now the Indian's turn to tremble. Leon seized him by the throat, and
throttled him by the pressure of his left hand, while in his right he
raised his machete to kill him.
"Die, scoundrel!" he shouted.
He had not finished the sentence when a blow from the butt end of a gun
fell on his head, and the smuggler captain fell senseless, while his
enemy was dragged away by the man who had thus saved him from a certain
death.
When Leon recovered his senses, the Indians had disappeared; of his
twenty-five companions, ten still lived, while the others, scalped
and horribly mutilated, were stretched out on the ground. Don Pedro
Sallazar was stanching, as well as he could, a wound which he had
received in the chest; while General Soto-Mayor was on his knees, and
holding in his arms the body of his wife, who had been killed by a
bullet through the temples.
The old man looked at the wound with a lacklustre eye, and seemed to be
no longer conscious of what was going on around him; still the heavy
tears that coursed down his pallid cheeks fell one by one on the face
of the dead woman.
"And the young ladies?" Leon anxiously asked, as he rose with great
difficulty; "I do not see them."
"They have been carried off by the Indians," Don Pedro replied, in a
hollow, sullen voice.
"Oh!" said Leon, mad with despair, "I am accursed!"
And, overcome by grief, he fell as if stunned to the ground. At this
moment a horseman entered the clearing; it was Major Don Juan, the son
of General Soto-Mayor.