The Indians Of The Orellanna, Also, Tell Of Horrible Noises Heard
Occasionally In The Paraguaxo, Which They Consider The Throes And
Groans Of The Mountains, Endeavoring To Cast Forth The Precious
Stones Hidden Within Its Entrails.
Others have endeavored to
account for these discharges of "mountain artillery" on humbler
principles; attributing them to the loud
Reports made by the
disruption and fall of great masses of rock, reverberated and
prolonged by the echoes; others, to the disengagement of
hydrogen, produced by subterraneous beds of coal in a state of
ignition. In whatever way this singular phenomenon may be
accounted for, the existence of it appears to be well
established. It remains one of the lingering mysteries of nature
which throw something of a supernatural charm over her wild
mountain solitudes; and we doubt whether the imaginative reader
will not rather join with the poor Indian in attributing it to
the thunderspirits, or the guardian genii of unseen treasures,
than to any commonplace physical cause.
Whatever might be the supernatural influences among these
mountains, the travellers found their physical difficulties hard
to cope with. They made repeated attempts to find a passage
through or over the chain, but were as often turned back by
impassable barriers. Sometimes a defile seemed to open a
practicable path, but it would terminate in some wild chaos of
rocks and cliffs, which it was impossible to climb. The animals
of these solitary regions were different from those they had been
accustomed to. The black-tailed deer would bound up the ravines
on their approach, and the bighorn would gaze fearlessly down
upon them from some impending precipice, or skip playfully from
rock to rock.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 280 of 615
Words from 75514 to 75792
of 165649
