On one of these experimental cruises, the explorers found themselves in an adventure which missed little of ending tragically. Barnes suggested following a little stream that appeared to run parallel to the main channel, and the Indians, who, of course, knew almost as little about the byways of the vicinity as their pa.s.sengers, were not unready to indulge their own curiosity; if the stream did not bring them into the open water again, they could soon turn back. The banks were low and spa.r.s.ely wooded, and suggested little in the shape of either game or human habitation; but these features did but add to the romance of the scene, and the two travellers were well content to go on; more particularly when they saw that ahead of them the banks promised to rise mountains high.

"We are coming to a canon," murmured an Indian lazily. All the better; Mr. Colton had never seen a canon worth the name.

Gradually the speed of the canoe quickened, and the rowers' labours became proportionately lighter; so much so that the chief looked grave.

"We must go no farther," he cried. "With a current like this, there must surely be rapids ahead."

"Then here's one who's for going back," said the Canadian, who knew, far better than his companion, what this might imply; shooting low rapids in small canoes, with Indians who knew every inch of the way, was all very well; but who could say that there was not a second Niagara within a few miles of them?

The Indians at once rested on their paddles, only to find that this did not greatly arrest the progress of the boat. For once, curiosity and indolence combined had got the better of their characteristic wariness. The chief signed to the white men to move to the other end of the boat, for there was no difference in the shape of her bows and stern, and, the weight properly adjusted, she could be worked either way and needed no turning. But even while they were obeying, the canoe moved swiftly on again; two of the Indians, in the confusion, had had their paddles swept from under them for a moment by the water, the canoe swerved a little more towards midstream, and was at once caught in an irresistible current.

"No good; we must take our chance now," said the chief. The note of something approaching despair in his voice was not comforting to his hearers.

"Come; we must make some effort," said the clergyman briskly. But his friend shook his head.

"Leave them alone; they won't miss a chance. They know they may do more harm than good with their paddles in a wash like this.--I say; this _is_ going it."

The canoe was fairly held by the tide now, and the utmost that could be done was for the chief and the bowman to keep her head straight.

The banks flew by at an appalling rate, rising higher and higher till they formed an imposing canon. Suddenly Barnes whistled under his breath.

"Can you hear?" he said.

The distant rumble which had hitherto pa.s.sed unnoticed, or at least unconnected with coming danger, was swelling to a thunder roll that could only proceed from a mighty rapid. Their plight was only too horribly apparent now; in the ordinary course of events, nothing could save them from the destruction awaiting them, and to attempt to make matters better by trying to reach the smoother water under either bank, would only be to make that destruction quite as sure and much more swift. And the black dots ahead, where the current split into forty currents and joined again beyond; what were they? Rocks, beyond a doubt. That being the case, it was not easy to understand why the chief's morose expression suddenly grew brighter. He made a motion with his head, and one of the braves picked up and loosened a coil of rope, muttering words in dialect to the other canoemen.

"O-ho! Sit tight," whispered Barnes.

The Indian had doubled his rope, so that the bight formed a loop-noose; and now, on his knees across the bottom of the boat, with the three unoccupied canoemen ready to bear a hand at a quarter of a second's notice, he was watching a spike of rock that rose two or three feet above the torrent, between which and a flat islet of stone, the current was bearing them. Colton involuntarily half closed his eyes; safety was so near now; yet so sickeningly doubtful. Now they were up to the pa.s.sage. At any rate, the bows had not dashed on to either rock. Now they were through. Only a few yards beyond was a ghastly vision of boulders--a whole bed of them, over which the torrent surged and bubbled, and which they could never hope to pa.s.s.

He opened his eyes wide again. If they were alongside the little pinnacle of rock, why did the Indian still remain motionless?

But, at that very moment, the lean brown arm shot past his head, as though the brave had struck at him; the three waiting Indians fell almost on to their faces grasping at something; there was a jerk that brought a frightful spasm of pain to the face of the man who had thrown the rope, and the boat had come to a stop. The bight had fallen over the splinter of rock, and already the ends of rope had been made fast to the canoe by the three waiting redskins, while the fourth held the double line together till the chief had bound the two cords with a thong, so completing the noose.

The men could now take enough breath to enable them to realise that, so far, their case was not much better than it had been. As long as the line held, they were in no danger of being dashed on to the rocks, or beyond, to the distant rapids; but they could never paddle back; and, though there was a little food in the boat, they must starve to death in a few days if they stayed here.

"_There's_ the way out," said Barnes confidently, after a lengthy silence.

Ay; it was a way out, but only such as a man of strong nerve could follow. They who dared might leap on to the flat rock on the other side of the canoe, walk across it, and, by a series of jumps, from one to another of the three stepping-stones beyond, reach a low spit of rock that ran out from the cliff foot; and from there the face of the canon might be scaled with tolerable ease, in one place, by means of a series of ledges and boulders.

"I will climb up and examine," said one of the redskins; and he leapt lightly across the awful current and began his walk over the rocks, the rest watching in breathless suspense. In half an hour he was back again, with the report that the top of the cliff was a narrow, barren hill, sloping gently down on two of its sides; would they not do well to abandon the canoe and walk back to the lake sh.o.r.e?

This course did not recommend itself to anyone; least of all to the white men, who could not afford to leave their baggage behind. The only other plan was to land, drag the canoe as far as possible out of the current and into the fringe of smoother water, and then tow her; and this they agreed to adopt. Five of the redskins were to climb up to the cliff-top, carrying a tow line, and the remaining one was to stay behind and steer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ARDUOUS TASK

Five of the redskins climbed up to the cliff-top carrying a tow-line, and the remaining one stayed behind to steer.]

Barnes and Colton were for accompanying the Indians; but when he came to face the six-foot leap over that roaring torrent, the clergyman, who was no longer young or very active, felt that in his case it would be sheer suicide to attempt the jump; and he stayed behind with the steersman. In so doing he well knew that he was not choosing the safer course. For, the moment the mooring rope was removed, the boat began to kick frightfully, and water was soon streaming over her bows. He caught up a copper pot and began baling for dear life, till the sweat ran out of him and his arms grew weary, and till the water had ceased to flow in. Then he looked up at the other men; there they were, fifty or sixty feet above him, straining like horses going uphill, in their effort to fight the current below. What wonder that he looked almost despairingly at the tow-line--a wretched contrivance hastily rigged up by joining together all the ropes and thongs that the canoe contained? How long was it going to stand the mere strain, let alone the sawing and chafing that it must get from every ab.u.t.ting rock? At such a time a man can do no more than keep a stiff upper lip, and humbly leave his fate in the Hands that, for wise purposes, made Nature at once as beautiful and as terrible as she is.

Suddenly the rector was aroused by the chief's voice.

"Can paddle! Yes! You see!"

The men at the top had paused for breath, but the line was no longer so horribly taut, and the fact that the chief was beginning to propel the boat at least sufficiently to cause the rope very soon to sag, showed that the worst was over. In due time she was towed as far as the low bank and the six men were taken aboard; but Mr. Colton never again trusted himself down a strange river with canoemen who knew no more about it than he.

CHAPTER XXV

A WALK ABOUT URUGUAY

Taken as a whole the Indians of Uruguay are--and have ever been--a brave but peace-loving people, engaged princ.i.p.ally in sheep and cattle-rearing. No doubt the mildness of their character and pursuits is largely due to considerations which are purely geographical; for the sea and the Uruguay River together make the country almost an island, to which the Argentine and Brazilian Indians would never venture to penetrate. Further, there are--apart from the native cattle--no large or fierce wild animals.

The latter fact is by no means generally known; and ignorance, or doubt of it, led the late Thomas Woodbine Hinchcliff to take a trip across from Buenos Ayres to the little state in the hope of finding jaguars, pumas, or other animals more worthy of a sportsman's gun than those which he had seen round about Buenos Ayres.

Mr. Hinchcliff was a London barrister, but is better remembered as the first president of the Alpine Club, and the man who did more than any of his contemporaries to popularise mountaineering. In 1861, while touring in South America, he went ash.o.r.e from a Uruguay River steamer, quite alone and with only provisions for a couple of days, determined to explore one of the mountain forests, and, if possible, to reach San Jose, the largest of the inland towns.

A fourteen-mile walk across a well-wooded plain brought him in sight of a Gaucho farmstead, where he was made very welcome and persuaded to stay the night; and it was here that he learned the futility of attempting to find any big game shooting in the country, and that there was nothing special to see at San Jose.

In consequence, he altered his course in the morning, making direct for the most accessible of the mountain forests, and, arrived here, he wandered about with the ecstasy of a man who has discovered an earthly paradise. It was the Amazon forest over again, with all its beauties and advantages and none of its drawbacks; a climate similar to that of Algiers, a wealth of fruit and flowers and streams and birds; and no deadly swamps, no suffocating heat, no jaguars or alligators, and apparently no snakes. He made his dinner of fruit and continued his wanderings, with a result that he might well have foreseen: when night came, he was utterly lost. He slept sweetly enough, however, under a tree, and after a hearty breakfast, continued his wanderings.

By evening he came to an outlet, and found himself on an undulating gra.s.s plain, but, as no habitation was in sight, he finished his provisions and philosophically resigned himself to another night in the fresh air.

He awoke early, conscious of two things; the one that he was hungry, the other that a beast whose like he had never seen, in or out of a show, was gravely inspecting him from a distance of a few feet. Was it a bull, or a bison, or a nightmare? Without question it had the body of a bull, but the face was far more like that of a bull-dog, for the nostrils were placed high up, and the lower jaw protruded in such a fashion, that the teeth showed ferociously, whether the mouth was closed or open.

He reached for his gun, which he had laid ready loaded on going to bed; the beast looked well capable of goring or trampling him to death at less than a minute's notice. But even while, half sitting, half lying, he took aim for the creature's eye, a general lowing sounded from farther down the hill, and the bull turned and ran swiftly down the slope. The bewildered Englishman arose and was now able to learn the cause of the lowing. A dozen mounted Indians were in the valley, their horses standing motionless, while two more, approaching from the left and right sides of the hill, were seeking to frighten a small herd of the remarkable-looking animals into the valley. The bull, no doubt the recognised protector of his tribe, whom curiosity had betrayed into a momentary neglect of duty, had heard the bellowings of alarm, and was hastening to the defence of his kindred.

But even as he charged wrathfully down the hill, the nearer of the Indians made a motion with his arm, and he fell with a crash that was distinctly audible to the spectator above; while the second Indian, spurring his horse and bawling at the top of his voice, rode straight at the retreating cattle; these, of course, became panic-stricken and ran helter-skelter down towards the spot where the unruffled hors.e.m.e.n were awaiting them with la.s.soes. From his vantage ground, Hinchcliff watched the proceedings with breathless interest. For a minute or so a whole maze of la.s.soes showed against the background of the next slope, curling and twirling; then the herd fled, some right, some left; some to rush away out of sight, others to be pulled up in mid-career by the fatal thong that had been deftly thrown over their horns; and so suddenly and sharply, that in most cases they fell to the ground.

The Englishman walked quickly towards his particular bull, which lay roaring piteously, but the animal was up again before he could reach him; the Indian had dismounted, slipped a noose over the roarer's head, and untwisted from his forelegs what Hinchcliff at once recognised as a _bolas_--three thongs of equal length, the upper ends joined, the lower loose, and each terminating in a ball of metal or heavy wood.

The redskin, whose only garment was a pair of loose-fitting trousers made of deer-skin, looked inquisitively at the stranger and gave him a respectful "good morning" in Spanish; adding to the bull, which was beginning to toss his head and stamp, "Useless, old friend; useless; we have coveted you this many a day," and even while he spoke he vaulted across his horse and started away at a breakneck speed, dragging his captive after him, w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

By the time the pedestrian reached the valley, the prisoners seemed to have become sullenly reconciled to their fate, for they were making no attempt to struggle, and some had even begun to crop the gra.s.s at their feet, leaving their captors free to inspect the stranger.

Hinchcliff told them, in Spanish, that he had lost his way and wanted some breakfast.

"It is many miles to our town," said the young man who had caught the disturber of his peace; "but we shall breakfast here when we have made our cattle fast. You are welcome to share our food."

His companions echoed the invitation, and, the cattle being secured to the neighbouring trees, the Indians seated themselves by a pool and shared their breakfast of chocolate-cake, bread and beef with their guest, who now began to notice the queer bulls and cows more closely.

The hind legs were markedly longer than the front ones, and, whenever they moved, they seemed to be looking for pasture, for they persistently kept their heads low and their necks sloping.

"We call them _niata_," was the reply to a question of his. "The best and youngest will be kept for breeding; the rest will be slaughtered for _carne seca_."

_Carne seca_, the very meat to which the hungry Englishman was doing such abundant justice, is beef dried in the sun; and for the last fifty years, Uruguay has been exporting immense quant.i.ties of it all over South America. The _niata_ cattle are peculiar to Uruguay and La Plata, and are probably the only kind indigenous to South America.

When breakfast was finished, the question naturally arose, whither did the senor wish to be guided? In point of fact, the senor had seen quite enough of the woods and hills for one while, and lost no time in making up his mind that he would like to visit their village, provided there was some means of riding there.

One of the Indians pointed to his horse.