114 



CHARLES DARWIN 



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 independent? With 

 the sun for their guide, mare's flesh for food, their saddle- 

 cloths for beds, — as long as there is a little water, these men 

 would penetrate to the end of the world. 



A few 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 pres- 

 ent. Some Indians, who had been taken prisoners, gave 

 information 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 Cor- 

 dillera were in sight. The Indians, men, women, and chil- 

 dren, were about one hundred and ten in number, and they 

 were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every 

 man. The Indians are now so terrified that they offer no 

 resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his wife 

 and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they 

 fight against any number to the last moment. One dying In- 

 dian seized with his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and 

 allowed his own eye to be forced out sooner than relinquish 

 his hold. Another, who was wounded, feigned death, keeping 

 a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer 

 said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out 

 for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the 

 bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and 

 so strike his pursuer. " I however struck him with my sabre 

 to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat 

 with my knife." This is a dark picture ; but how much more 

 shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who 

 appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood ! 

 When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he 

 answered, " Why, what can be done ? they breed so ! " 



