by Mayne Reid
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
THE PERILS OF A PERUVIAN ROAD.
It was as yet only an hour or so after daybreak--for the vicuna hunt hadoccupied but a very short time and the capture of the condor a stillshorter. Don Pablo was anxious to be gone, as he knew he was not beyondthe reach of pursuit. A pair of the vicunas were hastily prepared, andpacked upon a llama for use upon their journey. Thus furnished, theparty resumed their route.
The vaquero did not accompany them. He had an office to perform of farmore importance to their welfare and safety. As soon as they were gonehe let loose his four snarling curs, and taking them out to where thepile of dead vicunas lay upon the plain, he left them there withinstructions to guard the carcasses from foxes, condors, or whateverelse might wish to make a meal off them. Then mounting, he rode off tothe place where the road leading from Cuzco ascended upon thetable-land, and having tied his horse to a bush, he climbed upon aprojecting rock and sat down. From this point he commanded a view ofthe winding road to the distance of miles below him. No traveller--muchless a party of soldiers--could approach without his seeing them, evenmany hours before they could get up to where he sat; and it was for thatreason he had stationed himself there. Had Don Pablo been pursued, thefaithful Indian would have galloped after and given him warning, longbefore his pursuers could have reached the plain.
He sat until sunset--contenting himself with a few leaves of coca. Nopursuer appeared in sight. He then mounted his horse, and rode back tohis solitary hut.
Let us follow our travellers.
They crossed the table-plain during the day, and rested that night underthe shelter of some overhanging rocks on the other side. They suppedupon part of the vicunas, and felt more cheerful, as they widened thedistance between themselves and danger. But in the morning they did notremain longer by their camp than was necessary to get breakfast.Half-an-hour after sunrise saw them once more on their route.
Their road led through a pass in the mountains. At first it ascended,and then began to go downward. They had crossed the last ridge of theAndes, and were now descending the eastern slopes. Another day'sjourney, or two at most, would bring them to the borders of that wildforest, which stretches from the foot-hills of the Andes to the shoresof the Atlantic Ocean--that forest with scarcely a civilised settlementthroughout all its wide extent--where no roads exist--whose only pathsare rivers--whose dark jungles are in places so impenetrable that theIndian cannot enter them, and even the fierce jaguar, embarrassed by thethick underwood, has to take to the tree-tops in pursuit of his prey.Another day's journey or so would bring them to the borders of the"Montana"--for such is the name which, by a strange misapplication ofterms, has been given to this primeval wood. Yes, the Montana wasbefore them, and although yet distant, it could now and then be seen asthe road wound among the rocks, stretching far towards the sky like agreen and misty ocean.
In that almost boundless region there dwelt none but the aborigines ofthe soil--the wild Indians--and these only in sparse and distant bands.Even the Spaniards in their day of glory had failed to conquer it; andthe Portuguese from the other side were not more successful. Here andthere a lone missionary attempted to wheedle the simple natives into abelief in his monkish religion, or when able to do so _forced it uponthem_, by fire and sword! But most of these efforts, both of conquestand conversion, had failed; and now, with the exception of some isolatedtrading post, or decayed mission station, on the banks of the greatrivers, the whole "Montana" was as wild and savage as when the keels ofColumbus first ploughed the waters of the Carib Sea.
The Spanish colonists, on the Peruvian or western border of this immenseforest, had never been able to penetrate it as colonists or settlers.Expeditions from time to time had passed along its rivers in search ofthe fabled gold country of _Manoa_, whose king each morning gave himselfa coating of gold dust, and was hence called El Dorado (the gilded); butall these expeditions ended in mortification and defeat. Thesettlements never extended beyond the _sierras_, or foot-hills of theAndes, which stretch only a few days' journey (in some places but ascore of leagues) from the populous cities on the mountain-heights.Even at this present time, if you travel thirty leagues eastward of thelarge town of Cuzco, in the direction taken by Don Pablo, you will passthe boundaries of civilisation, and enter a country unexplored andaltogether unknown to the people of Cuzco themselves! About the"Montana" very little is known in the settlements of the Andes. Fiercetribes of Indians, the jaguar, the vampire bat, swarms of mosquitoes,and the hot atmosphere, have kept the settler, as well as the curioustraveller, out of these wooded plains.
Don Pablo had already passed the outskirts of civilisation. Anysettlement he might find beyond would be the hut of some half-wildIndian. There was no fear of his encountering a white face upon theunfrequented path he had chosen, though had he gone by some other routehe might have found white settlements extending farther to the eastward.As it was, the wilderness lay before him, and he would soon enter it.
_And what was he to do in the wilderness_? He knew not. He had neverreflected on that. He only knew that behind him was a relentless foethirsting for his life. To go back was to march to certain death. Hehad no thoughts of returning. That would have been madness. Hisproperty was already confiscated--his death decreed by the vengefulViceroy, whose soldiers had orders to capture or slay, wherever theyshould find him. His only hope, then, was to escape beyond the bordersof civilisation--to hide himself in the great Montana. Beyond this hehad formed no plan. He had scarcely thought about the future. Forward,then, for the Montana!
The road which our travellers followed was nothing more than a narrowpath, or "trail" formed by cattle, or by some party of Indiansoccasionally passing up from the lower valleys to the mountain-heights.It lay along the edge of a torrent that leaped and foamed over its rockybed. The torrent was no doubt on its way to join the greatest ofrivers, the mighty Amazon--the headwaters of which spring from all partsof the Andes, draining the slopes of these mountains through more thantwenty degrees of latitude!
Towards evening the little party were beginning to enter among themountain spurs, or foot-hills. Here the travelling grew exceedinglydifficult, the path sometimes running up a steep acclivity and thendescending into deep ravines--so deep and dark that the sun's raysseemed hardly to enter them. The road was what Spanish-Americans term,"_Cuesta arriba, cuesta abajo_" (up hill, down hill).
In no part of the world are such roads to be met with as among the AndesMountains, both in South America and in their Mexican continuationthrough the northern division of the continent. This arises from thepeculiar geological structure of these mountains. Vast clefts traversethem, yawning far into the earth. In South America these are called_quebradas_. You may stand on the edge of one of them and look sheerdown a precipice two thousand feet! You may fancy a whole mountainscooped out and carried away, and yet you may have to reach the bottomof this yawning gulf by a road which seems cut out of the face of thecliff, or rather has been formed by a freak of Nature--for in thesecountries the hand of man has done but little for the roads. Sometimesthe path traverses a ledge so narrow that scarce room is found for thefeet of your trusty mule. Sometimes a hanging bridge has to be crossed,spanning a horrid chasm, at the bottom of which roars a foamingtorrent--the bridge itself, composed of ropes and brambles, all thewhile swinging like a hammock under the tread of the affrightedtraveller!
He who journeys through the tame scenery of European countries can formbut little idea of the wild and dangerous highways of the Andes. Eventhe passes of the Alps or Carpathians are safe in comparison. On thePeruvian road the lives of men and animals are often sacrificed. Mulesslide from the narrow ledges, or break through the frail "soga" bridges,carrying their riders along with them, whirling through empty air to beplunged into foaming waters or dashed on sharp rocks below. These areaccidents of continual occurrence; and yet, on account of the apathy ofthe Spano-Indian races that inhabit these countries, little is done foreither roa
ds or bridges. Every one is left to take care of himself, andget over them as he best may. It is only now and then that positivenecessity prompts to a great effort, and then a road is repaired or abroken bridge patched with new ropes.
But the road that was travelled by Don Pablo had seen no repairs--therewere no bridges. It was, in fact, a mere pathway where the travellerscrambled over rocks, or plunged into the stream, and forded or swamacross it as he best could. Sometimes it lay along the water's edge,keeping in the bottom of the ravine; at other places no space was leftby the water, and then the path ascended and ran along some ledgeperhaps for miles, at the end of which it would again descend to the bedof the stream.
