70 The Ravine of the Unburied Dead. QJuly, 



these rocky shelves and thundering cataracts we might still find ways to 

 shew you that our means of torture are not confined to the cells of your 

 miserable palace. Forward — forward. Forget not that you are in our 

 power." 



" No you are in mine," exclaimed the cazique, triumphantly, as soon 

 as the words of Juan were made intelligible to him. He turned for a 

 moment from the clouded object of his inquiring gaze, and fixed an eye 

 on Alcantara, which even startled that obtuse commander. " Juan, chief 

 of oppressors, man without mercy, conqueror stained with blood, hast 

 thou counted over thy sins this morning.?" he said sternly and awfully. 

 " Hast thou thought aught on the innocent blood which calls out to 

 heaven against thee > Hast thou remembered that a whole land is now 

 sending up a cry of wailing which thou hast raised ? Lift up thine 

 heart for one moment, cry for mercy — aye, even to thy false God — for the 

 hand of Heaven's judgment is upon thee." — " Drag him forward — force 

 him up the mountain," exclaimed Juan. " Indian slave, pitiable 

 idolater, move onward. I will see this expedition terminated, and 

 terminated instu7dli/, or thy aged limbs, old man, shall be torn from thy 

 miserable body, and given to feed the fowls of the mountain." The 

 Indian did not for a moment appear to hear the threats of his Spanish con- 

 queror. His whole attention seemed fixed on the cloud whose last edge 

 now began to brighten with the rays of the sun as it passed from the orb. 

 The sun rode unveiled in the midst of heaven ! Juan repeated his man- 

 date. " I will know, and know without the delay of a fleeting moment, 

 the hidden place of thy treasures — the golden offerings which adorned 

 the fanes of thy false god." " Have thy wish," answered Cazique 

 Alpahula, loftily. " The best treasure of Peru is the heart of a patriot 

 chief — the noblest offering to her god, the lives of those who have 

 murdered his sons, and trampled down his temples. Adieu, native 

 earth and covering sky ! Farewell to all I have loved and looked on 1 

 Source of daj^ I come to tread thy beamy chambers. What, ho ! for 

 god and Peru !" 



Hernando suddenly saw, as in the flash of a moment, the fatal purpose 

 of the chief. He gave a shriek of warning : it came too late. Cazique 

 Alpahula, as he spoke, threw himself from the narrow and frightful 

 path with such a sudden and effectual plunge, that he dragged, in clang- 

 ing violence, after him, the tyrants to whom his chains were attached. 

 Amid shelving rocks,and frowning precipices, down — down descended 

 the fettered victims into a dark and yawning chasm, whose dismal 

 recesses had never, since the foundations of earth, been visited by one 

 beam of blessed day, or resounded to the tread of human foot. All was 

 the work of a moment — of the twinkling of an eye. In the first plunge 

 of the cazique, Hernando caught, with the suddenness of the lightning's 

 gleam, a passing sight of those descending victims ; and, brief as was 

 that fearful view, death closed the eye of the young Spaniard ere it 

 vanished from his sickening memory. He saw the momentary, the 

 flashing glance, of the triumphant Indian ; the pale countenance of unut- 

 terable despair of his ruined tyrant ; and the clenched teeth and vain 

 struggles of his followers, as they were dragged in shrieking resistance 

 to their dread and untimely tomb. 



As the unwilling companions in death bounded from shelf to shelf of 

 the dizzy precipice, the rocks gave back in wild echo the clang of their 



