ABBÉ BALTHAZAR.
Though my wounds had not ceased their smarting nor my bones their aching
my happiness was complete. The splendid prospect before me, the glittering
peaks of the Cordillera, the gleaming waters of the far Pacific, the
gardens and fountains of San Cristobal, the charm of Angela's presence,
and the abbé's conversation made me oblivious to the past and careless of
the future. The hardships and perils I had lately undergone, my weary
wanderings in the wilderness, the dull monotony of the Happy Valley, the
passage of the Andes, my terrible ride on the _nandu_, all were forgotten.
The contrast between my by-gone miseries and present surroundings added
zest to my enjoyment. I felt as one suddenly transported from Hades to
Elysium, and it required an effort to realize that it was not all a dream,
destined to end in a rude awaking.
After some talk about Europe, the revolt of the Spanish colonies, and my
recent adventures, the abbé gave me an account of his life and adventures.
The scion of a noble French family, he had been first a page of honor at
Versailles, then an officer of the _garde du corps_, and among the gayest
of the gay. But while yet a youth some terrible event on which he did not
like to dwell--a disastrous love affair, a duel in which he killed one who
had been his friend--wrought so radical a change in his character and his
ideals that he resigned his commission, left the court, and joined the
Society of Jesus, under the name of Balthazar. Being a noble he became an
abbé (though he had never an abbey) as a matter of course, and full of
religious ardor and thirsting for distinction in his new calling he
volunteered to go out as a missionary among the wild tribes of South
America.
After long wanderings, and many hardships, Balthazar and two fellow
priests accidentally discovered Quipai, at that time a mere collection of
huts on the banks of a small stream which descended from the gorges of the
Cordillera only to be lost in the sands of the desert. But all around were
remains which showed that Quipai had once been a place of importance and
the seat of a large population--ruined buildings of colossal dimensions,
heaps of quarried stones, a cemetery rich in relics of silver and gold;
and a great _azequia_, in many places still intact, had brought down water
from the heart of the mountains for the irrigation of the rainless region
of the coast.
Balthazar had moreover heard of the marvellous system of irrigation
whereby the Incas had fertilized nearly the whole of the Peruvian desert;
and as he surveyed the ruins he conceived the great idea of restoring the
aqueduct and repeopling the neighboring waste. To this task he devoted his
life. His first proceeding was to convert the Indians and found a mission,
which he called San Cristobal de Quipai; his next to show them how to make
the most of the water-privileges they already possessed. A reservoir was
built, more land brought under cultivation, and the oasis rendered capable
of supporting a larger population. The resulting prosperity and the abbé's
fame as a physician (he possessed a fair knowledge of medicine) drew other
Indians to Quipai.
After a while the gigantic undertaking was begun, and little by little,
and with infinite patience and pain accomplished. It was a work of many
years, and when I travelled the whole length of the _azequia_ I marvelled
greatly how the abbé, with the means at his command, could have achieved
an enterprise so arduous and vast. The aqueduct, nearly twenty leagues in
length, extended from the foot of the snow-line to a valley above Quipai,
the water being taken thence in stone-lined canals and wooden pipes to the
seashore. In several places the _azequia_ was carried on lofty arches over
deep ravines: and there were two great reservoirs, both remarkable works.
The upper one was the crater of an extinct volcano, of unknown depth,
which contained an immense quantity of water. It took so long to fill that
the abbé, as he laughingly told me, began to think that there must be a
hole in the bottom. But in the end it did fill to the very brim, and
always remained full. The second reservoir, a dammed up valley, was just
below the first; it served to break the fall from the higher to the lower
level and receive the overflow from the crater.
A bursting of either of the reservoirs was quite out of the question; at
any rate the abbé so assured me, and certainly the crater looked strong
enough to hold all the water in the Andes, could it have been got therein,
while the lower reservoir was so shallow--the out-flow and the loss by
evaporation being equal to the in-take--that even if the banks were to
give way no great harm could be done.
I mention these particulars because they have an important bearing on
events that afterward befell, and on my own destiny.
Only a born engineer and organizer of untiring energy and illimitable
patience could have performed so herculean a labor. Balthazar was all
this, and more. He knew how to rule men despotically yet secure their
love. The Indians did his bidding without hesitation and wrought for him
without pay. In the absence of this quality his task had never been done.
On the other hand, he owed something to fortune. All the materials were
ready to his hand. He built with the stone quarried by the Incas. His work
suffered no interruption from frost or snow or rain. His very isolation
was an advantage. He had neither enemies to fear, friends to please, nor
government officers to propitiate.
On the landward side Quipai was accessible only by difficult and little
known mountain-passes which nobody without some strong motive would care
to traverse, and passing ships might be trusted to give a wide berth to an
iron-bound coast destitute alike of harbors and trade.
So it came to pass that, albeit the mission of Quipai was in the dominion
of the King of Spain, none of his agents knew of its existence, his writs
did not run there, and Balthazar treated the royal decree for the
expulsion of the Jesuits from South America (of which he heard two or
three years after its promulgation) with the contempt that he thought it
deserved. Nevertheless, he deemed it the part of prudence to maintain his
isolation more rigidly than ever, and make his communications with the
outer world few and far between, for had it become known to the
captain-general of Peru that there was a member of the proscribed order in
his vice-royalty, even at so out of the way a place as Quipai he would
have been sent about his business without ceremony. The possibility of
this contingency was always in the abbé's mind. For a time it caused him
serious disquiet; but as the years went on and no notice was taken of him
his mind became easier. The news I brought of the then recent events in
Spain and the revolt of her colonies made him easier. The viceroy would
have too many irons in the fire to trouble himself about the mission of
Quipai and its chief, even if they should come to his knowledge, which was
to the last degree improbable. We sat talking for several hours, and
should probably have talked longer had not the abbé kindly yet
peremptorily insisted on my retiring to rest.
Early next morning we started on an excursion to the valley lake, each of
us mounted on a fine mule from the abbé's stables, and attended by an
_arriero_. North as well as south of San Cristobal (as the village was
generally called) the country had the same garden-like aspect. There was
none of the tangled vegetation which in tropical forests impedes the
traveller's progress; except where they had been planted by the roadside
for protection from the sun, or bent over the water-courses, the trees
grew wide apart like trees in a park. Men and women were busy in the
fields and plantations, for the abbé had done even a more wonderful thing
than restoring the great _azequia_--converted a tribe of indolent
aborigines into an industrious community of husbandmen and craftsmen;
among them were carpenters, smiths, masons, weavers, dyers, and cunning
workers in silver and gold. The secret of his power was the personal
ascendancy of a strong man, the naturally docile character of his
converts, the inflexible justice which characterized all his dealings with
them, and the belief assiduously cultivated, that as he had been their
benefactor in this world he could control their destinies in the next.
Though he never punished he was always obeyed, and there was probably not
a man or woman under his sway who would have hesitated to obey him, even
to death.
The lake was small yet picturesque, its verdant banks deepening by
contrast the dark desolation of the arid mountains in which it was
embosomed. Some three thousand feet above it rose the extinct volcano, the
slopes of which in the days of the Incas were terraced and cultivated.
Angela and I half rode, half walked to the top; but the abbé, on the plea
that he had some business to look after, stayed at the bottom.
The crater was about eight hundred yards in diameter and filled nearly to
the brim with crystal water, which outflowed by a wide and well made
channel into the lake, the supply being kept up by the in-flow from the
_azequia_, whose course we could trace far into the mountains.
The view from our coigne of vantage was unspeakably grand. Behind us rose
the stupendous range of the Andes, with its snow-white peaks and smoking
volcanoes; before us the oasis of Quipai rolled like a river of living
green to the shores of the measureless ocean, whose shining waters in that
clear air and under that azure sky seemed only a few miles away, while, as
far as the eye could reach, the coast-line was fringed with the dreary
waste where I had so nearly perished.
The oasis, as I now for the first time discovered, was a valley, a broad
shallow depression in the desert falling in a gentle slope from the foot
of the Cordillera to the sea, whereby its irrigation was greatly
facilitated.
"How beautiful Quipai looks, and how like a river!" said Angela. "That is
what I always think when I come here--how like a river!"
"Who knows that long ago the valley was not the bed of a river!"
"It must be very long ago, then, before there was any Cordillera.
Rain-clouds never cross the Andes, and for untold ages there can have been
no rain here on the coast."
"You are right. Without rain you cannot have much of a river, and if the
_azequia_ were to fail there would be very little left of Quipai."
"Don't suggest anything so dreadful as the failure of the _azequia_. It is
the Palladium of the mission and the source of all our prosperity and
happiness. Besides, how could it fail? You see how solidly it is built,
and every month it is carefully inspected from end to end."
"It might be destroyed by an earthquake."
"You are pleased to be a Job's comforter, Monsieur Nigel. Damaged it might
be, but hardly destroyed, except in some cataclysm which would destroy
everything, and that is a risk which, like all dwellers in countries
subject to earthquakes, we must run. We cannot escape from the conditions
of our existence; and life is so pleasant here, we are spared so many of
the miseries which afflict our fellow-creatures in other parts of the
world--war, pestilence, strife, and want--that it were as foolish and
ungrateful to make ourselves unhappy because we are exposed to some remote
danger against which we cannot guard, as to repine because we cannot live
forever."
"You discourse most excellent philosophy, Mademoiselle Angela."
"Without knowing it, then, as Monsieur Jourdan talked prose."
"So! You have read Molière?"
"Over and over again."
"Then you must have a library at San Cristobal."
"A very small one, as you may suppose; but a small library is not
altogether a disadvantage, as the abbé says. The fewer books you have the
oftener you read them; and it is better to read a few books well than many
superficially."
"The abbé has been your sole teacher, I suppose?"
"Has been! He is still. He has even written books for me, and he is the
author of some of the best I possess--But don't you think, monsieur, we
had better descend to the valley? The abbé will have finished his business
by this time, and though he is the best man in the world he has the fault
of kings; he does not like to wait."