The Guide of the Desert

"That was my intention, but unhappily certain reasons, with which it would be useless to acquaint you, render the execution of this project impossible. However, I reckon on seeing you at the fazenda do Rio d'Ouro, where probably I shall arrive before you. In any case, will you remain there till I have seen you, and then perhaps it will be permitted to me to acknowledge, as I have an earnest desire to do, the great service you have rendered me."

"I will wait for you, since you desire it, Señor," I answered, boldly accepting these new circumstances, "not to remind you of the event to which you allude, but because I should be happy to become more intimately acquainted with you."

On the next day, at sunrise, I rose, and after having affectionately taken leave of the people who had so well received me, and whom I thought I should never see again, I left the rancho without being able to bid adieu to don Zeno Cabral.

CHAPTER IV

THE FAZENDA DO RIO D'OURO

My journey was continued thus under rather singular circumstances – at the mercy of an Indian whose perfidy had been already abundantly proved, and from whom I could expect no good.

However, I was well armed, vigorous, resolute, and set out in pretty good spirits, convinced that my guide would never attack me to my face.

I beg to state that I was wrong in attributing bad intentions to the poor Indian, and that my precautions were unnecessary. Don Torribio and don Zeno Cabral had said the truth; the rude correction inflicted on my Guaranis had had the most salutary influence on him, and had entirely modified his intentions towards me.

He became more lively, more amiable, and especially more of a talker; I took advantage of this change in his disposition to sound him with regard to don Zeno Cabral.

This time also I completely failed, not because the Indian refused to answer me, but on account of his ignorance. In a few words, this is all I succeeded in learning.

Don Zeno Cabral was well known, and especially much feared by all the Indians who live on the desert, and who unceasingly traverse it in every direction. He was to them a strange, mysterious, incomprehensible being, whose power was very great. No one knew his regular abode; he almost possessed the attribute of ubiquity, for he had been seen at distances far removed from each other almost at the same time; the Indians had often laid traps to kill him without ever having succeeded in inflicting on him the slightest wound.

He often disappeared for months together without their knowing what had become of him, then they saw him suddenly camped in their midst without their knowing how he had arrived there.

On the whole, the Indians, apart from the respectful fear he had inspired in them, for the most part were much indebted to him; no one better than he knew how to cure those maladies supposed to be incurable by their sorcerers.

This information, if I can so call the timid and superstitious ramblings of my guide, left me more perplexed than I was before with regard to this man, whom everything tended to surround in my eyes with a mysterious halo.

A word uttered, perhaps, by chance by the Indian aroused still more my insatiable curiosity.

"He is a Paulista," he said to me, in a subdued voice, looking cautiously around him, as if he feared that this word might fall upon an indiscreet ear.

On several occasions during my stay at Buenos Aires, I had heard of the Paulistas: the information which had been given me with regard to them, although for the most part very incomplete and erroneous, had, however, greatly excited my curiosity.

The Paulistas, or Vicentistas, for these two names are indifferently applied to the early historians, first settled in the vast and magnificent plains of Piratininga. There was then organised under the intelligent and paternal direction of the two Jesuits, Antieta and Nobrega, a colony within a colony – a sort of half barbarous metropolis, which owes to its courage a continually increasing prosperity and influence, and the exploits of which if some day they are related, will form, I am convinced, a most interesting chapter in the history of Brazil.

Thanks to the intervention of the Jesuits in Brazil, the Europeans did not disdain to ally themselves with those strong and bellicose Indian races who so long held the Portuguese in check, and sometimes drove back the conquerors.

From these alliances there arose a warlike race – brave, inured to all kinds of fatigue, and remarkably daring, who, well governed, produced the Paulistas.

Several serious charges are laid at their door; they have been accused from the very foundation of their colony of having shown an indomitable and independent disposition, an affected disdain for the laws of the mother city, and an unheard-of pride towards the other colonists.

To these accusations the Paulistas have given the most complete denial.

The province of St. Paul, peopled by them alone, is now the most civilised, the most industrious, and the richest in Brazil.

I urged my journey as much as possible, the rather because my guide had informed me that the fazenda do Rio d'Ouro, where don Zeno Cabral had given me a rendezvous, was situated on the frontier of the province of St. Paul, of which it was one of the richest and most vast achievements.

In order the more quickly to reach the end of our long journey, my guide, notwithstanding the difficulties of the way, had led us along the inundated banks of the Rio Uruguai.

On the fourth day after our departure from the rancho, we reached the Aldea of Santa Anna, the first Brazilian station in ascending the river.

The excessive rise of the river had caused terrible ravages in this miserable village, composed of scarcely a dozen ranchos. Several had been carried away by the waters, the remainder were threatened with speedy inundation; the poor inhabitants, reduced to the most frightful distress, were camped on a little hill, awaiting the withdrawal of the waters.

Nevertheless, these poor people, spite of their misery, received us in the most hospitable way, placing at our disposal everything they could furnish us with.

It was with an unspeakable pang of the heart and profound gratitude that on the next day at sunrise I left these good people, who overwhelmed us at our departure with wishes for the success of our journey.

I continued to advance through a charming and varied landscape. Three days after my halt at Santa Anna, about two o'clock in the afternoon, at an angle of the route, I suddenly turned my head, and in spite of myself I stopped, uttering a cry of admiration at the unexpected sight of the most delicious country I had ever contemplated.

My Guaranis smiled with joy. It was to him that I owed this splendid surprise, which he had been preparing for me for some hours by inducing me to take, under pretext of shortening the journey, concealed paths through almost impenetrable woods.

Before me, almost at my feet, for I had stopped on the summit of an elevated hill, extended – enclosed in a horizon of verdure, formed by a belt of virgin forest – a landscape of about ten leagues in circumference, of which, thanks to my position, my eye took in the minutest details. About the centre of this landscape, over an extent of two leagues, was a lake, the transparent waters of which were an emerald green in colour – the wooded and beautiful picturesque mountains which surrounded it were covered in some places with plantations.

We were on the spot where the Curitiba or Guazu, a rather important river, an affluent of the Parana, that we had reached, after having traversed the Paso de los Infieles, enters the lake.

At the entry of the Guazu I perceived an isle which my guide assured me had formerly floated, but which had by degrees approached the bank, where it had become fixed. At first formed by aquatic plants, the vegetable earth had been heaped up there, and now it is covered with pretty thick wood. Then, in the distance, in the midst of a ravine between two hills covered with wood, I perceived a considerable number of buildings raised like an amphitheatre, and surmounted by a tall steeple.

Below the rugged steep, on the summit of which these buildings were situated, the Guazu rushed along, struggling over the obstacles that abrupt rocks, covered with a verdant lichen, opposed to its course; then, dividing into several arms, it lost itself, after innumerable meanderings, in the sombre valleys which stretched right and left. I could not take my eyes from the spectacle of nature in this grand, wild, and really imposing form. I remained there as though fascinated, not caring either to advance or recede, so great was the emotion that I experienced, and, forgetting everything, still looking without being satiated at this splendid view, to which nothing can be compared.

"How beautiful!" I cried.

"Is it not?" replied the guide.

"What is this magnificent country called?"

"Do you not know, mi amo?" said the Indian.

"How should I know, when I come here today for the first time?"

"Why, because this country is well known, mi amo," replied he; "people come from long distances to see it."

"I doubt it not, but I should like to know its name."

"You see before you the fazenda do Rio d'Ouro; in former days all these mountains that you see were filled with gold and precious stones."

"And now?" I asked, interested in spite of myself.

"Oh, now they do not work the mines; they are exhausted or inundated with water. The master pretends that it is much better to work the earth."

"He is not wrong. What is the name of the good man who reasons so judiciously?"

"I do not know, mi amo; they pretend that the fazenda, and all the lands appertaining to it, belong to don Zeno Cabral, but I should not dare to assert it; but, for that matter, it would not astonish me, for singular things are related as to what passes in the caldeiras that you see down there," added he, pointing with his finger to three round holes in the form of a funnel, pierced in the rocks.

"What do they relate, then, that is so extraordinary?"

"Oh, frightful things, mi amo, and things which I, a poor Indian, should never dare to repeat."

It was in vain I pressed my guide to explain himself; I could only draw from him ejaculations of fright, accompanied by innumerable signs of the cross. Wearied of doing so, I gave up asking any farther about a subject which appeared to displease him so much.