Gaspar the Gaucho: A Story of the Gran Chaco. Reid Mayne
a question of race and climate. In Spanish America, land of feminine precocity, there is many a wife and mother not yet entered on her teens!
For nigh ten years Halberger lived happily with his youthful esposa; all the happier that in due time a son and daughter – the former resembling himself, the latter a very image of her mother – enlivened their home with sweet infantine prattle. And as the years rolled by, a third youngster came to form part of the family circle – this neither son nor daughter, but an orphan child of the Señora’s sister deceased. A boy he was, by name Cypriano.
The home of the hunter-naturalist was not in Assuncion, but some twenty miles out in the “campo.” He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show himself in the streets of Assuncion; for, like all true naturalists, he had no affection for city life. Assuncion, however, being the only shipping port in Paraguay, he had no choice but repair thither whenever his collections became large enough to call for exportation.
Beginning life in South America with moderate means, the Prussian naturalist had prospered: so much, as to have a handsome house, with a tract of land attached, and a fair retinue of servants; these last, all “Guanos,” a tribe of Indians long since tamed and domesticated. He had been fortunate, also, in securing the services of a gaucho, named Gaspar, a faithful fellow, skilled in many callings, who acted as his mayor-domo and man of confidence.
In truth, was Ludwig Halberger in the enjoyment of a happy existence, and eminently prosperous. Like Aimé Bonpland, he was fairly on the road to fortune; when, just as with the latter, a cloud overshadowed his life, coming from the self-same quarter. His wife, lovely at fourteen, was still beautiful at twenty-four, so much as to attract the notice of Paraguay’s Dictator. And with Dr Francia to covet was to possess, where the thing coveted belonged to any of his own subjects. Aware of this, warned also of Francia’s partiality by frequent visits with which the latter now deigned to honour him, Ludwig Halberger saw there was no chance to escape domestic ruin, but by getting clear out of the country. It was not that he doubted the fidelity of his wife; on the contrary, he knew her to be true as she was beautiful. How could he doubt it, since it was from her own lips he first learnt of the impending danger?
Away from Paraguay, then – away anywhere – was his first and quickly-formed resolution, backed by the counsels of his loyal partner in life. But the design was easier than its execution; the last not only difficult, but to all appearance impossible. For it so chanced that one of the laws of that exclusive land – an edict of the Dictator himself – was to the point prohibitive; forbidding any foreigner who married a native woman to take her out of the country, without having a written permission from the Executive Head of the State. Ludwig Halberger was a foreigner, his wife native born, and the Head of the State Executive, as in every other sense, was José Gaspar Francia!
The case was conclusive. For the Prussian to have sought permission to depart, taking his wife along with him, would have been more than folly – madness – hastening the very danger he dreaded.
Flight, then? But whither, and in what direction? To flee into the Paraguayan forests could not avail him, or only for a short respite. These, traversed by the cascarilleros and gatherers of yerba, all in the Dictator’s employ and pay, would be no safer than the streets of Assuncion itself. A party of fugitives, such as the naturalist and his family, could not long escape observation; and seen, they would as surely be captured and carried back. The more surely from the fact that the whole system of Paraguayan polity under Dr Francia’s régime was one of treachery and espionage, every individual in the land finding it to his profit to do dirty service for “El Supremo” – as they styled their despotic chief.
On the other side there was the river, but still more difficult would it be to make escape in that direction. All along its bank, to the point where it enters the Argentine territory, had Francia established his military stations, styled guardias, where sentinels kept watch at all hours, by night as in the day. For a boat to pass down, even the smallest skiff, without being observed by some of these Argus-eyed videttes, would have been absolutely impossible; and if seen as surely brought to a stop, and taken back to Assuncion.
Revolving all these difficulties in his mind, Ludwig Halberger was filled with dismay, and for a long time kept in a state of doubt and chilling despair. At length, however, a thought came to relieve him – a plan of flight, which promised to have a successful issue. He would flee into the Chaco!
To the mind of any other man in Paraguay the idea would have appeared preposterous. If Francia resembled the frying-pan, the Chaco to a Paraguayan seemed the fire itself. A citizen of Assuncion would no more dare to set foot on the further side of that stream which swept the very walls of his town, than would a besieging soldier on the glacis of the fortress he besieged. The life of a white man caught straying in the territory of “El Gran Chaco” would not have been worth a withey. If not at once impaled on an Indian spear held in the hand of “Tova” or “Guaycuru,” he would be carried into a captivity little preferable to death.
For all this, Ludwig Halberger had no fear of crossing over to the Chaco side, nor penetrating into its interior. He had often gone thither on botanising and hunting expeditions. But for this apparent recklessness he had a reason, which must needs here be given. Between the Chaco savages and the Paraguayan people there had been intervals of peace —tiempos de paz– during which occurred amicable intercourse; the Indians rowing over the river and entering the town to traffic off their skins, ostrich feathers, and other commodities. On one of these occasions the head chief of the Tovas tribe, by name Naraguana, having imbibed too freely of guarapé, and in some way got separated from his people, became the butt of some Paraguayan boys, who were behaving towards him just as the idle lads of London or the gamins of Paris would to one appearing intoxicated in the streets. The Prussian naturalist chanced to be passing at the time; and seeing the Indian, an aged man, thus insulted, took pity upon and rescued him from his tormentors.
Recovering from his debauch, and conscious of the service the stranger had done him, the Tovas chief swore eternal friendship to his generous protector, at the same time proffering him the “freedom of the Chaco.”
The incident, however, caused a rupture between the Tovas tribe and the Paraguayan Government, terminating the tiempo de paz, which had not since been renewed. More unsafe than ever would it have been for a Paraguayan to set foot on the western side of the river. But Ludwig Halberger knew that the prohibition did not extend to him; and relying on Naraguana’s proffered friendship, he now determined upon retreating into the Chaco, and claiming the protection of the Tovas chief.
Luckily, his house was not a great way from the river’s bank, and in the dead hour of a dark night, accompanied by wife and children – taking along also his Guano servants, with such of his household effects as could be conveniently carried, the faithful Caspar guiding and managing all – he was rowed across the Paraguay and up the Pilcomayo. He had been told that at some thirty leagues from the mouth of the latter stream, was the tolderia of the Tovas Indians. And truly told; since before sunset of the second day he succeeded in reaching it, there to be received amicably, as he had anticipated. Not only did Naraguana give him a warm welcome but assistance in the erection of his dwelling; afterwards stocking his estancia with horses and cattle caught on the surrounding plains. These tamed and domesticated, with their progeny, are what anyone would have seen in his corrals in the year 1836, at the time the action of our tale commences.
Chapter Four.
His Nearest Neighbours
The house of the hunter-naturalist was placed at some distance from the river’s bank, its site chosen with an eye to the picturesque; and no lovelier landscape ever lay before the windows of a dwelling. From its front ones – or, better still, the verandah outside them – the eye commands a view alone limited by the power of vision: verdant savannas, mottled with copses of acacia and groves of palm, with here and there single