I.

Far away from the paths of those who wander to and fro on the earth,

sleeps Jujuy in the heart of this continent. It is the remotest of our

provinces, and divided from the countries of the Pacific by the giant

range of the Cordillera; a region of mountains and forest, torrid heats

and great storms; and although in itself a country half as large as the

Spanish peninsula, it possesses, as its only means of communication

with the outside world, a few insignificant roads which are scarcely

more than mule-paths.

The people of this region have few wants; they aspire not after

progress, and have never changed their ancient manner of life. The

Spanish were long in conquering them: and now, after three centuries

of Christian dominion, they still speak the Quichua, and subsist in

a great measure on patay, a sweet paste made from the pod of the wild

algarroba tree; while they still retain as a beast of burden the llama,

a gift of their old masters the Peruvian Incas.

This much is common knowledge, but of the peculiar character of the

country, or of the nature of the things which happen within its

borders, nothing is known to those without; Jujuy being to them only a

country lying over against the Andes, far removed from and unaffected

by the progress of the world. It has pleased Providence to give me a

more intimate knowledge, and this has been a sore affliction and great

burden now for many years. But I have not taken up my pen to complain

that all the years of my life are consumed in a region where the

great spiritual enemy of mankind is still permitted to challenge the

supremacy of our Master, waging an equal war against his followers:

my sole object is to warn, perhaps also to comfort, others who will

be my successors in this place, and who will come to the church of

Yala ignorant of the means which will be used for the destruction of

their souls. And if I set down anything in this narrative which might

be injurious to our holy religion, owing to the darkness of our

understandings and the little faith that is in us, I pray that the sin

I now ignorantly commit may be forgiven me, and that this manuscript

may perish miraculously unread by any person.

I was educated for the priesthood, in the city of Cordova, that famous

seminary of learning and religion; and in 1838, being then in my

twenty-seventh year, I was appointed priest to a small settlement in

the distant province of which I have spoken. The habit of obedience,

early instilled in me by my Jesuit masters, enabled me to accept this

command unmurmuringly, and even with an outward show of cheerfulness.

Nevertheless it filled me with grief, although I might have suspected

that some such hard fate had been designed for me, since I had been

made to study the Quichua language, which is now only spoken in the

Andean provinces. With secret bitter repinings I tore myself from all

that made life pleasant and desirable--the society of innumerable

friends, the libraries, the beautiful church where I had worshipped,

and that renowned University which has shed on the troubled annals

of our unhappy country whatever lustre of learning and poetry they

possess.

My first impressions of Jujuy did not serve to raise my spirits. After

a trying journey of four week's duration--the roads being difficult and

the country greatly disturbed at the time--I reached the capital of the

province, also called Jujuy, a town of about two thousand inhabitants.

Thence I journeyed to my destination, a settlement called Yala,

situated on the north-western border of the province, where the river

Yala takes its rise, at the foot of that range of mountains which,

branching eastwards from the Andes, divides Jujuy from Bolivia. I was

wholly unprepared for the character of the place I had come to live in.

Yala was a scattered village of about ninety souls--ignorant, apathetic

people, chiefly Indians. To my unaccustomed sight the country appeared

a rude, desolate chaos of rocks and gigantic mountains, compared with

which the famous sierras of Cordova sunk into mere hillocks, and of

vast gloomy forests, whose death-like stillness was broken only by the

savage screams of some strange fowl, or by the hoarse thunders of a

distant waterfall.

As soon as I had made myself known to the people of the village, I set

myself to acquire a knowledge of the surrounding country; but before

long I began to despair of ever finding the limits of my parish in

any direction. The country was wild, being only tenanted by a few

widely-separated families, and like all deserts it was distasteful

to me in an eminent degree; but as I would frequently be called upon

to perform long journeys, I resolved to learn as much as possible of

its geography. Always striving to overcome my own inclinations, which

made a studious, sedentary life most congenial, I aimed at being very

active; and having procured a good mule I began taking long rides every

day, without a guide and with only a pocket compass to prevent me from

losing myself. I could never altogether overcome my natural aversion

to silent deserts, and in my long rides I avoided the thick forest and

deep valleys, keeping as much as possible to the open plain.

One day having ridden about twelve or fourteen miles from Yala, I

discovered a tree of noble proportions growing by itself in the open,

and feeling much oppressed by the heat I alighted from my mule and

stretched myself on the ground under the grateful shade. There was a

continuous murmur of lecheguanas--a small honey wasp--in the foliage

above me, for the tree was in flower, and this soothing sound soon

brought that restful feeling to my mind which insensibly leads to

slumber. I was, however, still far from sleep, but reclining with eyes

half closed, thinking of nothing, when suddenly, from the depths of the

dense leafage above me, rang forth a shriek, the most terrible it has

ever fallen to the lot of any human being to hear. In sound it was a

human cry, yet expressing a degree of agony and despair surpassing the

power of any human soul to feel, and my impression was that it could

only have been uttered by some tortured spirit allowed to wander for

a season on the earth. Shriek after shriek, each more powerful and

terrible to hear than the last, succeeded, and I sprang to my feet, the

hair standing erect on my head, a profuse sweat of terror breaking out

all over me. The cause of all these maddening sounds remained invisible

to my eyes; and finally running to my mule I climbed hastily on to its

back and never ceased flogging the poor beast all the way back to Yala.

On reaching my house I sent for one Osuna, a man of substance, able to

converse in Spanish, and much respected in the village. In the evening

he came to see me, and I then gave an account of the extraordinary

experience I had encountered that day.

"Do not distress yourself, Father--you have only heard the Kakué," he

replied. I then learnt from him that the Kakué is a fowl frequenting

the most gloomy and sequestered forests and known to every one in the

country for its terrible voice. Kakué, he also informed me, was the

ancient name of the country, but the word was misspelt Jujuy by the

early explorers, and this corrupted name was eventually retained. All

this, which I now heard for the first time, is historical; but when he

proceeded to inform me that the Kakué is a metamorphosed human being,

that women and sometimes men, whose lives have been darkened with great

suffering and calamities, are changed by compassionate spirits into

these lugubrious birds, I asked him somewhat contemptuously whether he,

an enlightened man, believed a thing so absurd.

"There is not in all Jujuy," he replied, "a person who disbelieves it."

"That is a mere assertion," cried I, "but it shows which way your

mind inclines. No doubt the superstition concerning the Kakué is very

ancient, and has come down to us together with the Quichua language

from the aborigines. Transformations of men into animals are common

in all the primitive religions of South America. Thus, the Guaranies

relate that flying from a conflagration caused by the descent of the

sun to the earth many people cast themselves into the river Paraguay,

and were incontinently changed into capybaras and caymans; while others

who took refuge in trees were blackened and scorched by the heat and

became monkeys. But to go no further than the traditions of the Incas

who once ruled over this region, it is related that after the first

creation the entire human family, inhabiting the slopes of the Andes,

were changed into crickets by a demon at enmity with man's first

creator. Throughout the continent these ancient beliefs are at present

either dead or dying out; and if the Kakué legend still maintains its

hold on the vulgar here it is owing to the isolated position of the

country, hemmed in by vast mountains and having no intercourse with

neighbouring states."

Perceiving that my arguments had entirely failed to produce any effect

I began to lose my temper, and demanded whether he, a Christian, dared

to profess belief in a fable born of the corrupt imagination of the

heathen?

He shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I have only stated what we, in

Jujuy, know to be a fact. What is, is; and if you talk until to-morrow

you cannot make it different, although you may prove yourself a very

learned person."

His answer produced a strange effect on me. For the first time in my

life I experienced the sensation of anger in all its power. Rising to

my feet I paced the floor excitedly, and using many gestures, smiting

the table with my hands and shaking my clenched fist close to his face

in a threatening manner, and with a violence of language unbecoming

in a follower of Christ, I denounced the degrading ignorance and

heathenish condition of mind of the people I had come to live with; and

more particularly of the person before me, who had some pretensions to

education and should have been free from the gross delusions of the

vulgar. While addressing him in this tone he sat smoking a cigarette,

blowing rings from his lips and placidly watching them rise towards the

ceiling, and with his studied supercilious indifference aggravated

my rage to such a degree that I could scarcely restrain myself from

flying at his throat or striking him to the earth with one of the

cane-bottomed chairs in the room.

As soon as he left me, however, I was overwhelmed with remorse at

having behaved in a manner so unseemly. I spent the night in penitent

tears and prayers, and resolved in future to keep a strict watch over

myself, now that the secret enemy of my soul had revealed itself to

me. Nor did I make this resolution a moment too soon. I had hitherto

regarded myself as a person of a somewhat mild and placid disposition;

the sudden change to new influences, and, perhaps also, the secret

disgust I felt at my lot, had quickly developed my true character,

which now become impatient to a degree and prone to sudden violent

outbursts of passion during which I had little control over my tongue.

The perpetual watch over myself and struggle against my evil nature

which had now become necessary was the cause of but half my trouble. I

discovered that my parishioners, with scarcely an exception, possessed

that dull apathetic temper of mind concerning spiritual things, which

had so greatly exasperated me in the man Osuna, and which obstructed

all my efforts to benefit them. These people, or rather their ancestors

centuries ago, had accepted Christianity, but it had never properly

filtered down into their hearts. It was on the surface still; and if

their half-heathen minds were deeply stirred it was not by the story

of the Passion of our Lord, but by some superstitious belief inherited

from their progenitors. During all the years I have spent in Yala I

never said a Mass, never preached a sermon, never attempted to speak of

the consolations of faith, without having the thought thrust on to me

that my words were useless, that I was watering the rock where no seed

could germinate, and wasting my life in vain efforts to impart religion

to souls that were proof against it. Often have I been reminded of

our holy and learned Father Guevara's words, when he complains of the

difficulties encountered by the earlier Jesuit missionaries. He relates

how one endeavoured to impress the Chiriguanos with the danger they

incurred by refusing baptism, picturing to them their future condition

when they would be condemned to everlasting fire. To which they only

replied that they were not disturbed by what he told them, but were,

on the contrary, greatly pleased to hear that the flames of the future

would be unquenchable, for that would save them infinite trouble,

and if they found the fire too hot they would remove themselves to a

proper distance from it. So hard it was for their heathen intellects to

comprehend the solemn doctrines of our faith!