The Rover of the Andes by Robert Michael Ballantyne (books to read for 12 year olds txt) 📕

that is so, war is pleasant to them. It is natural. Man must work, or play, or fight. He cannot lie still. Those who are killed cannot return to tell their comrades what fools they have been, so those that remain are greater fools than ever."

"I agree with you, Tiger; but you see it is not the young men who have the making of war, though they generally get all the doing of it, and the poor women and children take the consequences; it is the governors, whom one would expect to show some sort of wisdom, and recognise the fact that union is strength, and that respect for Law is the only hope of the land."

"Governors," returned Tiger, in a deep voice, "are not only fools, but villains--tyrants!"

The Indian spoke with such evidence of suppressed indignation that Pedro tried to look at him.

The aspect of his frowning countenance upside-down was not conducive to gravity.

"Come, Tiger," said Pedro, with a tendency to laugh, "they are not all tyrants; I know one or two who are not bad fellows."

"_I_ know one who is a fool and a robber."

"Indeed. What has he done to make you so bitter?" asked Pedro.

"Made us wear spectacles!" replied the Indian, sternly.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you not heard about it?"

"No; you know I have been away in Chili for some time, and am ignorant of much that has been going on in these parts."

"There is in Spain a white man, I know not who," said Tiger, with an expression of ineffable contempt, "but he must be the chief of the fools among the white men, who seem to me to be all fools together."

"Thank you for the compliment," said Pedro, with a laugh.

"This white fool," continued Tiger, paying no regard to his friend's interruption, "thought that he would send out here for sale some spectacles--glass things, you know, that old white men look through when they cannot see. We Indians, as you know, never need such things. We can see well as long as we live. It is supposed that a mistake was made by some one, for something like a canoe-load of spectacles was sent out--so many that in a hundred years the white men could not have used them up. The trader knew not what to do. There was no sale for them. He applied to the governor--that robber of whom I have spoken. He said to the trader, with a wink of his eye--that sort of wink which the white fool gives when he means to pass from folly to knavery--`Wait,' he said, `and you shall see.' Then he issued an order that no Indian should dare to appear in his district, or in church during festival-days, _without spectacles_! The consequence was that the spectacles were all sold. I know not the price of these foolish things, but some white men told me they were sold at an enormous profit."

Although Pedro sympathised heartily with his brown friend in his indignation, he could not quite repress a smile at the ridiculous ideas called up. Fortunately the Indian failed to interpret an upside-down smile, particularly with the moustache, as it were, below instead of above the mouth, and a cigarette in the lips. It was too complicated.

"And were _you_ obliged to buy and wear a pair of these spectacles, Tiger?" asked Pedro, after a few silent puffs.

"Yes--look! here they are," he replied, with inconceivable bitterness, drawing forth the implements of vision from his pouch and fixing them on his nose with intense disgust. Then, suddenly plucking them off; he hurled them into the river, and said savagely--"I was a Christian once, but I am not a Christian _now_."

"How? what do you mean?" asked Pedro, raising himself on his elbow at this, so as to look straightly as well as gravely at his friend.

"I mean that the religion of such men must be false," growled the Indian, somewhat defiantly.

"Now, Tiger," returned his friend in a remonstrative tone, "that is not spoken with your usual wisdom. The religion which a man professes may be true, though his profession of it may be false. However, I am not unwilling to admit that the view of our religion which is presented in this land is false--very false. Nevertheless, Christianity is true. I will have some talk with you at another time on this subject, my friend. Meanwhile, let us return to the point from which we broke off--the disturbed state of this unhappy country."

Let us pause here, reader, to assure you that this incident of the spectacles is no fiction. Well would it be for the South American Republics at this day, as well as for the good name of Spain, if the poor aborigines of South America had nothing more serious to complain of than the arbitrary act of the dishonest governor referred to; but it is a melancholy fact that, ever since the conquest of Peru by Pizarro, the Spaniards have treated the Indians with brutal severity, and it is no wonder that revenge of the fiercest nature still lingers in the breasts of the descendants of those unfortunate savages.

Probably our reader knows that the Peruvian region of the Andes is rich in gold and silver-mines. These the Spanish conquerors worked by means of Indian slave labour. Not long after the conquest a compulsory system of personal toil was established, whereby a certain proportion of the natives of each district were appointed by lot to work in the mines. Every individual who obtained a grant of a mine became entitled to a certain number of Indians to work it, and every mine which remained unwrought for a year and a day became the property of any one who chose to claim and work it. As there were many hundreds of mines registered in Peru alone, it may be imagined what a host of Indians were consequently condemned to a degraded state of slavery.

The labour of the mines was so dreadful that each unfortunate on whom the lot fell considered it equivalent to his death-warrant. And that there was ground for this belief is proved by the fact that not more than one in six of the Indians condemned to the mines survived the treatment there inflicted. Each mitayo, or conscript, received nominally two shillings a day. But he never actually received it. On his fate being fixed by lot, the poor fellow carried his wife and children to the mines with him, and made arrangements for never again returning home. His food and lodging, being supplied by his employers, (owners?) were furnished at such an extravagant rate that he always found himself in debt at the end of his first year--if he outlived it. In that case he was not allowed to leave until his debt was paid, which, of course, it never was.

Usually, however, the bad air and heavy labour of the mines, coupled with grief, told so much on men accustomed to the fresh air and free life of the wilderness, that death closed the scene before the first year of servitude was out. It is said that above eight millions of natives have perished thus in the mines of Peru.

We have shown briefly one of the many phases of tyrannical cruelty practised by the conquerors of the land. Here is another specimen. At first there were few merchants in Peru, therefore privilege was granted to the Spanish corregidors, or governors of districts, to import goods suitable for Indians, and barter them at a fair price. Of course this permission was abused, and trade became a compulsory and disgraceful traffic. Useless and worthless articles and damaged goods--razors, for instance, silk stockings, velvets, etcetera--were forced on Indians who preferred naked feet and had no beards.

The deeds of the soldiers, miners, and governors were but too readily copied by the priests, many of whom were rapacious villains who had chosen the crucifix as their weapon instead of the sword. One priest, for instance, besides his regular dues and fees, received during the year as _presents_, which he _exacted_ at certain festivals, 200 sheep, 6000 head of poultry, 4000 guinea-pigs, and 50,000 eggs, and he would not say mass on those festival-days until a due proportion of the presents was delivered. And this case of extortion is not told of one of the priests of old. It occurred in the second quarter of the present century. Another priest summoned a widow to make declaration of the property left her by her husband, so that he might fix the scale of his burial fees! He made a high demand. She implored his mercy, reminding him of her large family. He was inexorable, but offered to give up his claim if she would give him her eldest son--a boy of eight--to be sold as a slave or given away as a present. (It seems that the senhoras of those lands want such boys to carry their kneeling carpets.) The civil authorities could not be appealed to in this case. There was no redress, so the widow had to agree to give up her son! Doubtless both in camp and in church there may have been good men, but if so, they form an almost invisible minority on the page of Peruvian history.

In short, tyranny in every form was, and for centuries has been, practised by the white men on the savages; and it is not a matter of wonder that the memory of these things rankles in the Indian's bosom even at the present time, and that in recent books of travel we read of deeds of diabolical cruelty and revenge which we, in peaceful England, are too apt to think of as belonging exclusively to the days of old.

But let us return to our friends in the little canoe.

"To tell you the truth," said Pedro to the Indian, "I am deeply disappointed with the result of my mission. It is not so much that men do not see the advantages and necessity for union, as that they are heartless and indifferent--caring nothing, apparently, for the welfare of the land, so long as the wants and pleasures of the present hour are supplied."

"Has it ever been otherwise?" asked Tiger, with grave severity of expression.

"Well, I confess that my reading of history does not warrant me to say that it has; but my reading of the good Creator's Word entitles me to hope for and strive after better times."

"I know not," returned the Indian, with a far-off, pensive look, "what your histories say. I cannot read. There are no books in my tongue, but my memory is strong. The stories, true stories, of my fathers reach very far back--to the time before the white man came to curse the land,--and I remember no time in which men did not desire each other's property, and slay each other for revenge. It is man's nature, as it is the river's nature to flow down hill."

"It is man's fallen, not his first, nature," said Pedro. "Things were as bad in England once. They are not quite so bad now. God's law has made the difference. However, we must take things here as we find them, and I'm sorry to think that up to this point my mission has been a failure. Indeed, the