THE INDIAN'S RETREAT.

31

which made the feeling heart sick-the last, feeble, dying remnant of a murdered nation.

At the upper end of the valley, the rocks rose around in walls and terraced ledges, like the bastions of a frowning fortress; but on every other side, the only boundary was the dense array of lofty trees clad in their ever-fresh and beauteous verdure that covered the steep slopes. From a fissure in one of the rocks a stream was bubbling, delightfully clear and cold, which then ran off in a tiny rivulet, brawling over pebbles, and breaking in miniature cascades down the valley. Trees, fragrant with blossom, around which thousands of bright-winged insects were fluttering in the sun, or loaded with fruit of many kinds, the golden marañon, the huge prickly guanabana, the rough but luscious nispero, the starry caymito, the prolific banana, the sapota with pulp like the marmalade of quinces, were scattered on either side of the stream; and the juicy granadillas of many kinds threw their tendrils over the sturdy trunks, making bowers and wild arbours in which the sun twinkled through the dancing leaves.

Signs of human industry were conspicuous, for the valley was almost wholly under cultivation, simple and rude as it was. There were the broad-leaved yuca plants in neat and well-kept rows, patches of maize in full ear, tiny fields of yam and batatas, a sort of lupine, and bushes of the favourite agi, or scarlet pepper. The indispensable tobacco, since dispersed over the whole world, displayed its large leaves and tubular pink blossoms; and there were lines of anil, with its racemes of purple flowers, affording the simple cultivators a blue dye for the cotton cloth, which they wove from the snowy tufts that hung from many a shrub.

A few huts were seen scattered among the trees; but quietness and solitude almost painful reigned everywhere. No children were playing in merriment or chasing the great

butterflies that flapped lazily over the flowers; no song of peaceful joy issued from the bowers, nor even the sound of a human voice. There would have been absolute silence but for the mingled warbling of birds, and the incessant crinking of the cicadas that sat among the sunny branches.

Beneath a lofty and majestic cahobo tree at the head of the glen, close to the fountain, was the hut of Guiboa the cacique. It was a simple but neat-structure, made of young stems of the palma real, intertwined with branches of the same, and lined with sheaths of jagua, fastened by the supple and twine-like bejuco. It was circular in form, with a high conical roof, neatly thatched with palm-leaves.

The cacique and his wife were both at the door of their sylvan pavilion; the one trimming his arrows, and dipping their points into a calabash of the poisonous manzanillo juice; the other grinding down a huge yuca root on a rough stone, for the making of cassaba. They were squatted on their heels, but on the approach of the strangers the man started to his feet with a low guttural "Quah!" and stood bolt upright, gazing on them with an expression of doubt and apprehension. But Gomez stepped forward with a smile, and in a few brief words made the Indian understand that their visit was friendly.

With native politeness, the politeness of a kindly and gentle disposition, he invited the visitors, by a wave of his hand that would not have dishonoured a prince, to enter his tent. Meanwhile the lady, little burdened with clothing, but graced with retiring modesty, quickly spread before them such fare as she possessed, the ripe, sweet fruits, the thin cakes of cassaba, fresh from the heated stone on which they had been baking, and presented on the large, stiff leaves of the glossy caymito, with cold and sparkling water in calabashes.

The Spanish hidalgo, who had been familiar with the

THE INDIAN'S HOME.

333

proudest court in Europe, looked round with unfeigned interest on the interior of the dwelling of this Indian prince. Everything was scrupulously clean, but there was little of furniture; low seats carved out of single blocks of wood; two hamacs, or shallow nets of cotton suspended from the posts, in which they reposed; several large balls of cottonyarn; two or three hideous images; and a wooden mask ingeniously carved and painted, and beautifully adorned with the scale-like feathers of humming-birds, fastened on with native gum, and arranged in vividly coloured lines and patterns as brilliant as gems. These, with the frugal provisions, formed the whole of their in-doors property.

The Indians were grave and taciturn: the man possessed a slight stock of broken Spanish grafted upon his own barbarous tongue, which enabled him, by the aid of the natural and common language of eye and hand, to comprehend what was said to him by the Creole planter, who wished to show his young friend the Indian method of hunting the iguana. Very readily the cacique agreed to go with them for this purpose, and little delay sufficed for his preparations. He took with him his palm-wood bow and arrows, and a Spanish knife stuck in his belt, and strode on before.

A grateful smile lighted up his apathetic face, when, on coming to the road where the horses had been left, he noticed the considerate regard which had induced his visitors to avoid bruising the herbage at the entrance of his woodland path. The very existence of the Indian village was known to few of the colonists, for the district itself was lonely and seldom visited; it lay out of the ordinary beaten track, and was with difficulty accessible. The cruelties which had almost exterminated the native race were indeed no longer practised; nor had the existing generation shown any disposition to renew them; but the blight had gone

forth, and quickly and steadily the feeble remnant was dwindling to utter extermination. The remembrance of the past lay heavy on the hearts of the injured race, and what wonder that the traditions of their unparalleled wrongs made them distrustful of the white man?

Silent but not morose, Guiboa went on; now, as they passed through open glades, running swiftly, so as easily to keep pace with the ambling beasts; now creeping circumspectly, and glancing on every side where his quick senses told him game might lurk. Several times his unerring arrow had sped, and an utia, and two or three of the large forest doves, were already hanging at his belt. At length they arrived at a pool in a shaded dell, where the diminished water had left a wide margin of mud, partly cracked and baked by the sun, but soft and wet at the very edge of the tepid water. At this edge were congregated some scores of large and gorgeously coloured butterflies sucking the moisture; they rested on the mud, with their tall wings erected, crowded together like a fleet of yachts on a regatta day, rocking from side to side, or alternately opening and closing their magnificent pinions.

As the party approached, the whole flock rose on the wing, and danced and fluttered about, making the air of the little glade gay with their beauty. Gomez called the cacique, and pointing to the lovely creatures, asked him if he could catch some of them. He smiled assent, and laying down his ammunition and game, searched for a few minutes in the woods.

His quick and trained eye soon detected a young lagetta tree, the bark of which he cut through in two rings, some half-yard apart. Then, by a longitudinal slit, and by the help of his knife-point, he took off the cylinder of bark, from the inner surface of which he readily separated a thin stratum; this, when pulled open, presented a loose, fibrous

A BUTTERFLY-NET.

35

texture, hardly to be distinguished from manufactured lace. This he spread in the sun to dry, while he cut a slender sapling, and a shoot of bamboo. The latter he split; and taking a strip, bent it into a ring, which, with a few fibres from the leaves of the fan-palm, he bound to the end of the stick; here there was a ring and a handle. Then, with the palm-fibres, and a tuna-spine for a needle, all of which he found within a few yards, he ran together the lace, and sewing it round the ring of bamboo, formed as good a butterfly-net as could be desired. The whole process had not occupied above a quarter of an hour; and soon half-adozen of the splendid butterflies were seen and admired at leisure.

It was evident that this was not the first time that the Indian had made such a net as this; and, presently coming up to Gomez, and pointing to a brilliant humming-bird that was darting like a meteor from flower to flower, he uttered with emphasis its native name, guainumba.

"Si, Guiboa," said the planter, "catch us a guainumba by all means."

The tiny bird had inserted its spangled head into one of the fine flowers of a low majaguo tree; when the cacique, cautiously stealing up, made a sudden dash with the implement, snapping the flower with the stroke, and burying it, with the fluttering, frightened, little jewelled bird in the bag of the net. It was the first that Don Carlos had handled in its living wildness, and he looked with admiration on the rich metallic hues and lustrous gleams that flashed from its scaly plumes. When it was dismissed, the Indian killed it by the pressure of his thumb, and hung it with the other birds at his girdle, to afford further employment for the delicate fingers of his wife.

This little delay being passed, they soon arrived at the region which the iguana delights to haunt. It was a