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Updated: May 5, 2025
Thrusting in my head between the stems, I found myself gazing at a fleshless skull. The whole skeleton was there, but the skull had detached itself and lay some feet nearer to the open. With a few blows from the machetes of our Indians we cleared the spot and were able to study the details of this old tragedy.
We had six dogs, well-trained animals, two being retrievers, the others, powerful brutes, taught to rush into thickets and turn out the game, or to pull down the larger animals. The blacks carried guns, axes, and machetes; while we had our rifles, a brace of pistols, and a long knife a-piece.
There is also a great difference with many birds in the length of time during which the two annual plumages are retained; so that the one might come to be retained for the whole year, and the other completely lost. Thus in the spring Machetes pugnax retains his ruff for barely two months. Most species, which undergo a double moult, keep their ornamental feathers for about six months.
We were thus carried along side the piratical schooner, when all their fire arms were passed on board of her; the arm chest, which was in the stern sheets and covered with a tarpaulin, opened, several long knives and machetes taken out, their keen edges examined with the greatest scrutiny and passed on board the canoes for the expressed purpose of murdering us all.
In the event as we hoped, the improbable event of our being overtaken or intercepted, Gahra and I were resolved not to be taken alive; but we had, unfortunately, no firearms; they were all lost in the snow-storm. Our only weapons were bows and arrows and machetes.
Often the men had to cut the way with their machetes; sometimes we slid for yards over the wet mud; frequently our heads were caught by hanging vines, and faces and hands were scratched with brambles. When at last we came out upon a cleared space, we found ourselves at the Chinantec village of Santa Maria. Perhaps there were four houses in the village. Our appearance caused great excitement.
Yet the shabby tie about his neck was bound by a ring, in which was set a turquoise of great size and beauty. Evidently he was a being of droll contrasts, and I prepared myself to be surprised at nothing concerning him. Presently, as we loitered on through the palms, we came upon two negroes chopping away with their machetes, trimming up the debris of broken and decaying palm fans.
Amongst the half-breeds, especially where the Negro element exists, there are often quarrellings and rows, when they slash away at each other with their long knives or "machetes," and get ugly cuts, which, however, heal again quickly. Both the Negroes and Indians are decidedly inferior to the whites in intellect, but they do not differ so much from the Europeans as they do from each other.
Lucien and Sumichrast sat down, while the Indian and I, by means of our machetes, opened out a narrow path; at last we reached again the timber land, so we had now almost got out of our difficulties. The stalks of the nettles, cut off a few inches above the ground, served to give firmness to our footing.
The commander-in-chief, after complimenting us on the intelligence we had displayed, immediately issued orders for a party of his men, with their machetes and axes, to proceed into the defile and clear it of wood, so as to allow of the passage of cavalry. They were thus employed during the whole of the night, under the command of a gallant young Englishman.
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