Aug. 1833. 



INDIANS. 



119 



In the morning they started for the scene of the murder^ 

 with orders to follow the " rastro/^ or track^ even if it led 

 them to Chile. We subsequently heard that the wild In- 

 dians had escaped into the great Pampas^, and from some 

 cause the track had been missed. One glance at the rastro 

 tells these people a whole history. Supposing they ex- 

 amine the track of a thousand horses^ they will soon guess 

 by seeing how many have cantered the number of men ; by 

 the depth of the other impressions^ whether any horses were 

 loaded with cargoes; by the irregularity of the footsteps^ 

 how far tired ; by the manner in which the food has been 

 cooked^ whether the pursued travelled in haste; by the 

 general appearance^ how long it has been since they passed. 

 They consider a rastro of ten days or a fortnight^ quite 

 recent enough to be hunted out. We also heard that 

 Miranda struck from the west end of the Sierra Ventana, 

 in a direct line to the island of Cholechel, situated seventy 

 leagues up the Rio Negro. This is a distance of between 

 two and three hundred miles^ through a country completely 

 unknown. What other troops in the world are so indepen- 

 dent ? With the sun for their guide_, mares" flesh for food^, 

 their saddle-cloths for beds^ — as long as there is a little 

 water^ these men would penetrate to the land^s end. 



A fev/ days afterwards I saw another troop of these ban- 

 ditti-like soldiers start on an expedition against a tribe of 

 Indians at the small salinas^ who had been betrayed by a 

 prisoner cacique. The Spaniard who brought the orders for 

 this expedition was a very intelligent man. He gave me an 

 account of the last engagement at which he was present. 

 Some Indians^ who had been taken prisoners, gave informa- 

 tion of a tribe living north of the Colorado. Two hundred 

 soldiers were sent ; and they first discovered the Indians by 

 a cloud of dust from their horses' feet, as they chanced to be 

 travelling. The country was mountainous and wild, and it 

 must have been far in the interior, for the Cordillera was in 

 sight. The Indians, men, women, and children, were about 

 one hundred and ten in number, and they were nearly all 



