The Young Llanero Part 26

After spending a few days with my friends, I was compelled to conduct my llaneros back to rejoin the army.

I need not mention the other events of the campaign. At the end of a couple of months, Don Carlos and I again got leave to return home; and I accompanied him to his father's house, where Norah had since been staying, and where the whole of my family--who had been invited to pay a long visit--were a.s.sembled. It was to be terminated, I found, by my sister's marriage.

The day after our arrival had been fixed, Don Fernando informed me, for a meeting with Kanimapo and his tribe; which was to take place in a beautiful spot at the foot of the mountains. They set off at daybreak,--Don Fernando, with his sons and grandsons habited in full Spanish costume to do honour to the occasion. My father, uncles, and I, with some others, accompanied them,--making in all a party of about twenty.

Although our meeting was to be of a pacific character, we went armed as usual, no one moving about in that region without weapons. As we approached the spot, Don Fernando and his immediate relatives dismounted and advanced on foot towards a circle formed by a number of arrows stuck in the ground, beyond which stood Kanimapo and his tribe. He approached, and putting out his hand, grasped that of Don Fernando.

"My people," he said, "have hitherto been enemies to you, who desired to do them good; but henceforth, as the points of yonder arrows are concealed in the ground, so let all enmity be buried."

On this the Indians waved their hands, and uttered loud shouts, indicative of approval of what had been said. The speech, by-the-by, was much longer than I have reported it. Don Fernando replied in appropriate language; and the Indians again shouted, and held up their children to gaze at the white men who had now become their friends.

I must not dwell longer on the scene. It appeared to afford infinite satisfaction to all parties; and after other speeches had been made by inferior chiefs, and replied to by our friends, we returned home, while the Indians retired to their camp.

Kanimapo paid us a private visit soon afterwards, and a.s.sured me that the padre and the doctor had been mainly instrumental in bringing about the change of sentiment in his people.

After my sister's marriage with Don Carlos, we returned to my father's house, which had been substantially rebuilt.

The padre, in the meantime, had been engaged in further instructing the Indians, and in establis.h.i.+ng a school; having also procured an enlightened young Creole and his wife to act as master and mistress. He had begun, also, to translate portions of the Bible; which he was convinced, he said, was the only book by which their heathen darkness could be dispelled. He afterwards became one of the warmest advocates for its dissemination throughout the Republic, where a Bible Society soon after that period was established and flourished.

The doctor, who had been adding greatly to his knowledge of the natural history of the country, returned home with us; and, to his infinite satisfaction, found his boxes uninjured. At length he departed, with the fruits of his labours, to his beloved fatherland. He wrote me word of his safe arrival, and promised some day or other to pay us another visit.

The independence of Columbia being at length acknowledged by Spain, peace was established; and those who keep free of the political disputes which have so frequently broken out, impeding the moral and material progress of the country, have enjoyed, as we and our friends have done, as much happiness as frail mortals can expect to find here below.

On the cessation of hostilities I sheathed my sword, which I have never since drawn; and though I have given some brief descriptions of the battles and skirmishes in which I was engaged during the most eventful period of the history of Venezuela, I wish to impress on the minds of all the readers of my narrative that War is a terrible thing,--which Satan for his own ends encourages, but which wise men, and Christians especially, should endeavour by every means in their power to avoid.