Part 29 (1/2)
The Indian nodded gravely. He had heard of the misfortunes that had befallen the Spaniards, and knew that the fleet that had inflicted such damage upon them was commanded by an Englishman.
”The senor is provided with money,” Gomez said. ”I did not myself know that he was an Englishman, though I suspected from the manner in which I was hired that he had trouble with the Spaniards.”
”I would have told you so, Gomez,” Stephen said, ”but I thought it better that you should not know, so that if I were seized by the Spaniards you could declare that you were wholly ignorant of my being an Englishman, and believed that I was only a trader travelling on business.”
”They would not have believed me,” Gomez laughed. ”You had no goods with you, and your speech showed that you were not a Peruvian. I have often wondered on the way to what nation you belonged, and how it was that one so young could be ready to undertake so desperate an enterprise as you proposed; but now that I know you are an officer under the terrible English admiral I can well understand it.”
”I would do much,” Pita said, ”for any enemy of the Spaniards; and more for this reason than for the sake of money. I am ready to undertake to do my best to take you in safety to Barra; beyond that I would not go. The river below that is, as I hear, quite open, and you could journey down without difficulty save such as you would meet with from the Portuguese authorities; but the distance would be too great for me to return. Even from Barra it would be a journey fully two thousand miles home again.”
”What would be your terms for taking me to Barra?”
”I do not say that I would take you there, senor, I only say that I would try and do so. As I tell you, I have never journeyed far down the Madeira myself, and know not what the difficulties may be. For that reason I shall want half the money paid to me when we reach Cuzco, near which live my wife and family, and I must leave this with them in case I never return. I will think over what pay I shall require for myself and my comrade. It is not a matter upon which one can decide at a word.”
”I can quite understand that, Pita. I must of course keep sufficient in hand to pay my expenses down to Para, where I can doubtless obtain a pa.s.sage by an English s.h.i.+p. But I am ready to pay any sum you may ask that is within my means. Now, Gomez, we had better go out and look to the mules, and leave Pita to himself to think the matter over.”
”The Indian will not overcharge you,” Gomez said when they were outside the hut; ”the pay of these men is small. They value their lives lightly, and when, like Pita, they once take to the life of a guide, either to those who are searching for mines or to traders, they never settle down.
They are proud of the confidence placed in them, and of their own skill as guides, and so long as they can earn enough to keep their families during their absence-and a very little suffices for that-they are contented.”
”I suppose there are mines to be discovered yet, Gomez?”
”a.s.suredly there are,” the muleteer said confidently. ”The Spaniards have worked rich mines ever since they came here, but great as is the treasure that they have taken away, it is still insignificant compared with the store of gold among the Incas when they came here. Every Peruvian on this side of the Andes dreams of gold, and there are thousands of men who, as soon as they earn enough money to buy tools and provisions, set off to search for gold-mines or buried treasure. It is certain that the Incas buried a vast quant.i.ty of their treasure rather than see it fall into the hands of the Spaniards, and it has never been discovered. It is generally believed that the secret of the hiding-place is known to Indians, who have handed down the secret from father to son. This may be true or it may not.
So many thousands of Indians have either been killed by the Spaniards or have died in their mines, that it may well be that all who knew the secret died centuries ago. But I do not say that it may not be known to some of them now; if so, it is more likely that these may be among the tribes beyond the boundaries of Peru. There are vast tracts there where neither Spaniards nor Portuguese have penetrated. The whole country is one great forest, or, in some places, one great desert.
”The Indians of Peru have become, for the most part, an idle, s.h.i.+ftless race. Centuries of slavery have broken their spirit altogether, and had the secret been known to many of them, it would have been wrung from them long since, especially as all are now Catholics and go to confession, and would never be able to keep such a secret from leaking out. It is true that there are little Indian villages among the mountains where the people are still almost independent, and here the secret may still be handed down; but I doubt if it will ever be known. Doubtless it is guarded by such terrible oaths that those who know it will never dare to reveal it.
Pita has gone, in his time, with a score of expeditions in search of the treasure; most of these thought that they had obtained some clue to it, but nothing was ever discovered, and I doubt whether Pita himself was ever earnest in the search.
”In some respects he is like ourselves, in others he is still an Indian, and has a full share of Indian superst.i.tions, so that his Christianity is no deeper than his skin. He would do his best to guide those who employed him to the neighbourhood where they thought that the treasure was hidden, but I doubt whether he would do anything to a.s.sist in their search, or would really try to gather from the Indians any clue as to its whereabouts.”
”But, at any rate, the natives could not very well have carried away their gold-mines.”
”Not carried them away, senor,-no; and that the Spaniards had such rich mines at first shows that they did learn from the natives-by torture, I daresay-where most of these were situated; but they got more silver than gold, and even now there is gold to be found in the sands of most of the rivers in South America, so that I think it was from was.h.i.+ngs more than mines that the Spaniards got their gold. Still, we all think that there must have been rich gold-mines in the times before the Spaniards, and that when the natives saw how villainously their monarch and all his chief men were treated, and how the Spaniards thought of nothing but gold and silver, they may have blocked up the entrances to all their richest mines, and in a few years all signs of the sites would be covered by thick vegetation. You see, senor, these things are talked over whenever a few of us get together, and though there are not many other things that we do know, you will scarcely meet a Peruvian who could not talk with you for hours about the lost treasure and the lost gold-mines of the Incas.
”There are many places that I know of where the sand is rich enough to pay well for was.h.i.+ng, but they are all far away from habitations. A man would have to carry his stores and provisions and tools with him; and then, it is hard work, and a Peruvian does not care for hard work. As to the natives, there would be no keeping them at it, they would desert and run away at once; for not only do they hate work, but, above all things, they hate to work for gold. They look upon gold as an accursed thing, which brought about the conquest of the country by the Spaniards, and the centuries of oppression that have befallen their race; and even should a native alight upon a rich spot he would go away and never say a word about it, fearing that if he did, all sorts of trouble would fall upon him.”
”Pita is a fine-looking Indian, Gomez.”
”Yes, senor; he is a mixture, that is, he is of pure Indian blood, but he belongs to two tribes. His father was a native of one of the villages highest up among the hills. He too was a hunter and guide. In one of his journeys down in the plain country he married the daughter of one of the chiefs of the wild Indians, and Pita was their son. I don't know which tribe it was that his mother belonged to, but I know that they lived in the forests on one of the greater rivers. Pita is not one who talks much of himself, or who talks much at all, but I know that he has the reputation of being one of the most daring hunters and guides in the country, and that he has gone through many adventures while travelling with traders. He has always been trustworthy and faithful to his employers. As he says, he cannot promise to take you safely down the Madeira, but if any man can do it, he will.”
Half an hour later they returned to the hut, where the Indian was sitting in precisely the same att.i.tude in which they had left him.
”Well, Pita, have you arrived at a conclusion?” Gomez asked.
”I have thought it over,” he said, ”and I calculate that it may be a year before I return, and the risk is great. Can the senor afford to pay three hundred and sixty-five dollars? That is for the services of myself and my comrade. He has no wife or family, and will therefore need less pay than I, who will have to leave money behind for mine. The senor will be at no other expense until he arrives at Barra, except for such things as tea and sugar, and any liquor he may wish to put on board at starting. If the senor cannot afford that, I will guide him down along by the foot of the mountains until we can cross over into Chili. It will be an arduous journey, but without perils, and we shall pa.s.s through few villages.”
”How long will that take, Pita?”
”It would be a long journey, senor. As a bird flies it would be seven or eight hundred miles; but winding round the foot of the hills it would be two thousand.”
”I would rather try the other, Pita,” Stephen replied; for the thought of the pa.s.sage by water through unknown forests, and then down the Amazon, exercised a strong fascination over him, and the idea of a toilsome journey of two thousand miles was the reverse of attractive. The war was, he was sure, nearly over. He might arrive in Chili only to find that the admiral had gone away; and even when he reached the frontier he had another journey to make before he reached Valparaiso, whereas when he arrived at Para he could sail direct for England.