Shelter There Was None.

The copious draughts of evil-smelling water I had drunk in my raging thirst brought on nausea, and it was only by force of will that I kept myself from falling, when on an eminence I joyfully sighted the Brazilian estancia.

Hope then revived in me. My knowing horse had seen the house before me, and without any guidance made straight towards it at a quicker pace. Well he knew that houses in those desolate wastes were too far apart to be passed unheeded by, and I thoroughly concurred in his wisdom. As I drew up before the lonely place my tongue refused to shout "Ave Maria," but I clapped my perspiring hands, and soon had the satisfaction of hearing footsteps within. Visions of shade and of meat and drink and rest floated before my eyes when I saw the door opened. A coal-black face peeped out, which, in a cracked, broken voice, I addressed, asking the privilege to dismount. Horror of horrors, I had not even been answered ere the door was shut again in my face! Get down without permission I dare not. The house was a large edifice, built of rough, undressed stones, and had a thick, high wall of the same material all around.

Were the inmates fiends that they let me sit there, knowing well that there was no other habitation within miles? As the minutes slowly lengthened out, and the door remained closed, my spirits sank lower and lower. After a silence of thirty-five minutes, the man again made his appearance, and, coming right out this time, stared me through and through. After this close scrutiny, which seemed to satisfy him, but elicited no response to a further appeal from me, he went to an outlying building, and, bringing a strong hide lasso, tied it around my horse's neck. Not until that was securely fastened did he invite me to dismount. Presuming the lasso was lent me to tie out my horse, I led him to the back of the house. When I returned, my strange, unwilling host was again gone, so I lay down on a pile of hides in the shade of the wall, and, utterly tired out, with visions of banquets floating before my eyes, I dropped off to sleep.

Perhaps an hour afterwards, I awoke to find a woman, black as night, bending over me. Not seeing a visitor once in three months, her feminine curiosity had impelled her to come and examine me. Seemingly more amiable than her husband, she spoke to me, but in a strange, unmusical language, which I could not understand; and then she, too, left me. As evening approached, another inmate of the house made his appearance. He was, I could see, of a different race, and, to my joy, I found that he spoke fluently in Spanish. Conducting me to the aforementioned outhouse, a place built of canes and mud, he told me that later on a piece of meat would be given me, and that I could sleep on the sheepskins.

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