LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 463, 8 December 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

LOS T. Continued, Within sight of the hacienda was a rocky height of singular boldness, and of a conical form —an extinct volcano, at the foot of which had once, according to tradition, stood a populous Indian city, a sort of trails Atlantic Pompeii as regarded its fate, since it had been overwhelmed by showers of burning s ;oriie, centuries before the date of the Spanish conquest. The mountain, with its fringe of lava-beds, and its crater overgrown with thorny cacti and sumach-bushes, had long been cold and quiescent; but it was commonly known by the name once borne by the buried city, Tlatzlatepec, and was one of the most picturesque features of the landscape when viewed from Rio Seco, as my habitation was called. The Indians who still dwelt at the base of the hill were but a handful of miserable creatures, who earned a precarious livelihood by weaving baskets, or selling Hsh and faggots of dry sticks to the white settlers, and who were known to be inveterate beggars, and shrewdly suspected to be thieves. These squalid survivors of a once haughty tribe had little love for the pale-faces who had wrested from their race what had once been their maize-patches and hunting-grounds; but I was on tolerably amicable terms with them, having once chanced to render a service to an aged squaw named Mtasa, who was respected among her people as the descendant of a line of their former caciques, and -whom we used jestingly to call their queen. The occurrence, r.uch as it was, was briefly tins. In one of my rides across the more wooded country to the eastward, I had come upon a camp of gold-diggers from California, whom sonic auriferous rumour had tempted to try their luck among the gulches of Guatemala. Perhaps ill-success had soured the tempers of these rough fellows, for 1 found them in the very act of hanging up, to a forked branch of an evergreen oak, an Indian lad of some fourteen or fifteen years of age, the still writhing body of whose elder brother dangled from a similar tree at no great distance ; while a tall squaw, whose white hair streamed over her shoulders like that of a Pythoness, was volubly but vainly imploring, in broken Spanish, mercy for the younger of her two grandsons. ‘ G ness it’s all right, mister, ’ was the gruff answer of the spokesman to my inquiries ; ‘we caught the copper-coloured vermin prowling about, and trying to undo the heelropes of a horse. J udge Lynch’s law is good enough, I expect, for such thieving scum ; and ef the greasers of this hyar republic can’t keep their redskins from stealing, p’raps a twelve-foot lariat of tough hide kin euro ’em of it.’ And hanged the unlucky stripling would have been, but for the fortunate circumstance that my Texan cattle-manager, who was m my company, recognised a former

associate among the party, and that at our joint entreaty the lad’s life was spared. To my great surprise, on passing the Indian village. I found the whole tawny population astir, and evidently making haste to quit tlieir abodes; while conspicuous among them was the tall, weird-looking form of old Mtasa, wrapped in her dark blue blanket, and laden, as were the rest of the community, with portable property of a miscellaneous order fish-spears, racoonskins, and bundles of grey-coloured handkerchiefs, or worn-out fragments of European attire, being oddly mingled. In answer to my expressions of surprise at this hurried flitting, the old woman drew herself up to her full height, and stretched out her arm, not without a certain air of savage dignity, towards the mountain that loomed overhead. ‘ You pale men,’ she said, in her disjointed Castilian, ‘ think us poor Indians fools because we cling to the habits of our forefathers, and believe in our own traditions. But it was a wise cacique of old who bade our people, when they should sec the smoke on Tlatzlatepec, not to linger over-long ■within its shadow. See ! ’ And in effect, on looking up, I saw hovering above the crest of the extinct volcano a faint, curling wreath of white vapour, so slight as to have hitherto escaped my attention. ‘No, no ! ’ exclaimed Mtasa vehemently ; ‘ this is no trick ; no accident from the dropping of a firebrand on dried grass. The lire from which yonder smoke rises was never kindled by human hands. It bodes no good, senor.’ And, with a grim smile and a nod, the aged sibyl turned away, and joined the onward march of the remnant of her tribe. Somewhat perplexed, but disposed to attribute this mystic warning to some lingering superstition yet current among this degraded race, I rode on. I reached the cattle station in good time, and, before the sloping sun was low in the sky, remounted my horse to return home. My oxen were sold, my men paid off, and I had just received from the Texan a hearty handshake, which made my fingers tingle, and from the Spanish grazier a bow that would have graced a court, accompanied by an ‘ A Dios, Caballero !’ So far, all was well, and as I felt my mettled horse bound beneath me on his homeward route across the springy turf of the prairie, my spirits rose, and, cheering on the mustang, I took a boyish pleasure in the scamper across the boundless tract of flowerenamelled pasture. Suddenly my steed came to a halt, as though ho had been thrown back upon his haunches by the pressure of a powerful bit. Trembling in every limb, with quivering flanks and drooping head, he seemed paralysed by the immediate presence of some danger, viewless to me, I tried the spur, but in vain, nor were caresses more efficacious, while the cause of this singular trepidation was beyond my power of guessing until, lifting my eyes towards the eastern sky, I beheld a dusky mass of smoke, hoisted, like the Black Flag of Death, over the soaring peak of the volcano. Then the remembrance of the half-heeded words of the old Indian woman rushed in upon me, just as a herd of blackskinned, half-wild buffaloes came galloping past, with every sign of bovine terror ; and immediately afterwards I experienced a rocking sensation, while three or four frightened voices of half-breed herdsmen cried out, in shrill tones, ‘EI tiemblo ! Mercy ! mercy for the souls of those who are about to die, blessed San Jago, and ’ I heard no more, for there was a roar as though a thousand cannon had been discharged, and the dust rose in whirling clouds, and the solid earth seemed changed to surging water, so did it heave and roll. (To he continued .)