United States or Åland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Well, near the little village where, as you know, I was born, and went to school before coming to live with uncle at Assuncion, there was a pond full of these fish. We boys used to amuse ourselves with them; sending in dogs and pigs, whenever we had the chance, to see the scare they would get, and how they scampered out soon as they found what queer company they'd got into.
"About twenty miles," the vaqueano mutters to himself, with a glance, cast inquiringly ahead. "It can't be more than that to the river itself. Question is, whether I can make it anywheres near Assuncion. I'm not sure about this trail; evidently only a cattle run. It may lead me too much above or below.
She had a cousin about her own age, by name Cypriano, who was said to be very fond of her; and rumour had it around Assuncion, that they were being brought up for one another." Aguara's brow blackens, and his dark Indian eyes seem to emit sparks of fire. "Cypriano shall never have her!" he exclaims in a tone of angry determination. "How can you help it, amigo?" interrogates his tempter.
Again the eyes of the child, or her instincts, are keener and quicker than those of the parent; or, at all events, she is the first to speak, announcing a recognition. "Oh, papa!" she exclaims, still in whispers, "it's that horrid man who used to come to our house at Assuncion him mamma so much disliked the Senor Rufino."
Three days will take me to Assuncion less if this animal under me wasn't so near worn out; three more to return with the troop. Say a week in all; at the end of which, if there be a man named Caspar Mendez in the land of the living, it won't be he whose head I see out yonder. That will be off his shoulders, or if on them only to help hold in its place the loop-end of my lazo.
But no gaucho he, nor individual of any honest calling: instead, a criminal of deepest dye, experienced in every sort of villainy. For this man is Rufino Valdez, well-known in Assuncion as one of Francia's familiars, and more than suspected of being one of his most dexterous assassins.
A citizen of Assuncion would no more dare to set foot on the further side of that stream which swept the very walls of his town, than would a besieging soldier on the glacis of the fortress he besieged. The life of a white man caught straying in the territory of "El Gran Chaco" would not have been worth a withey.
Though not strange his being a naturalist since the taste for and study of Nature are notably peculiar to the German people it was strange to find Prussian or other European having his home in such an out-of-the-way place. There was no civilised settlement, no other white man's dwelling, nearer than the town of Assuncion; this quite a hundred miles off, to the eastward.
Often, while dwelling at Assuncion, had he witnessed the wonder and delight with which the savages who came there regarded all sorts of fireworks; and it had occurred to him that, in the event of their encountering strange Indians, some "spitting-devils" might prove of service.
This second warren lay at least a hundred miles from the one they have succeeded in crossing, in a direction due east from the latter, and on the straight route for the city of Assuncion. Let us throw aside circumlocution, and at once give account of the incident.
Word Of The Day