The Smuggler Chief: A Novel

America, a land not yet thoroughly explored, and whose immense savannahs and gloomy virgin forests conceal so many mysterious secrets and unknown dramas, sees at this moment all...

Between Valparaíso and Rio Claro, halfway to Santiago, stood a delicious country house, belonging to Don Juan de Dios-Souza y Soto-Mayor, a descendant of one of the noblest and...

Whatever may be asserted to the contrary, a religion frequently undergoes, unconsciously, the atmospheric influences of the country in which it is professed; and while remaining...

Three years prior to the events which we have just recorded, that is to say, about the month of May, 1830, Diego the Vaquero, who at that period was one of the bravest gauchos o...

"Long ago, very long ago," Diego, the Vaquero, began, "all the lands bordering the bay of Valparaíso belonged to the Indians, whose vast hunting grounds extended on one side fro...

Valparaíso, like nearly all the commercial centres of South America, is a collection of shapeless huts and magnificent palaces, standing side by side and hanging in long cluster...

We left Doña Maria in the garden of the convent, preparing to obey the summons of the venerable abbess, Doña Madeline Aguirre Frías, in religion, Sister Santa Marta de los Dolor...

It was about five in the evening when Leon Delbès left the posada in the company of Crevel. The great heat of midday had been succeeded by a refreshing sea breeze, which was beg...

The traveller who, proceeding south, leaves one fine morning the city of Santiago, that magnificent capital of Chili which is destined ere long (if it be not destroyed by an ear...

When the alarm was given by the sentry, Diego, usually so prompt to go and meet danger, rose cautiously, and without making a single gesture which could reveal any anxiety, stoo...

After walking for about ten minutes the two smugglers stopped; then Diego, looking around him inquiringly, imitated the whistle which had served as a signal to him, with such pe...

"I thank," he said, "the chiefs of the Twelve Nations for the honour which they do me, and I accept, because I believe myself worthy of it: but the war we are about to undertake...

The sun was rising radiantly when Señor Don Juan de Soto-Mayor, with pale face and features worn by the unhappy news which Don Pedro de Sallazar brought him on the previous even...

They travelled the whole day without any incidents: the heat which had so incommoded them all during the first few days, had been succeeded by a temperature which hourly became...

After Diego's departure, Leon remained for a long time leaning on the baggage which he had before him; the last words of his departing friend rang in his ear like the sound of a...

The Cordilleras of the Andes are strange mountains, with which no others in the world could be compared, and they form, so to speak, the backbone of the New World, the entire le...

After the infernal dance performed by the Indians round the tree of war, Tcharanguii, one of them, exhausted by fatigue, fell at the foot of the tree, in order to rest, and whet...

We left the unhappy relics of the caravan suffering from the impression which the fatal result of their struggle with the Indians produced on them. At the moment when young Don...

"However that may be," the captain resumed, "they are dead, and they were brave fellows. As for you, listen carefully to this;--While I, Wilhelm, and Giacomo go into the mountai...

The body of the Indian killed by Leon had followed for some minutes the course of the river, then had become entangled in the reeds, and eventually stopped exactly in the centre...

Tcharanguii, the chief of the Jaos, had rejoined his warriors, after entrusting Inez and Maria de Soto-Mayor to the care of the Sayotkatta of Garakouaïti. Immediately after he h...

In the sparkling beams of the sun which had risen radiant, the great landscape which Leon was passing through assumed a really enchanting appearance. Nature was, so to speak, an...

Tcharanguii had returned to Garakouaïti, with orders to fetch reinforcements for the Molucho army, which, under Tahi-Mari's orders, had seized by surprise Valdivia and Concepció...

We said that on the day of the escape Leon surprised the Sayotkatta in the act of listening at the door. He had not deceived himself; still, as Schymi-Tou was ignorant of Spanis...

The appearance of Valparaíso had greatly changed. It was no longer the careless, laughing town which we have described, echoing from morning to night with gay love songs, and wh...

It was about ten o'clock at night. It was cold and foggy; the wind whistled violently, and heavy black clouds coming from the south dropped heavy rain upon the ground. Between V...

Since the invasion of the Araucanos, Crevel's hostelry had lost much of its old splendour. No longer was heard the clink of glasses or the smashing of window panes which the noi...

It was a frightful thing to see Diego's headlong gallop along the road from Valparaíso to Santiago. In the shadows of the night, the shapeless group of the horse, and the two hu...

After wrapping himself carefully in his cloak, Leon pensively went along the streets leading to Crevel's inn. Diego's last words incessantly reverted to his mind, and he asked h...

General Soto-Mayor had been hurriedly raised by the volunteers, whom the report of the two pistol shots had attracted to his room, a surgeon attached to the reinforcing column w...

When Tahi-Mari reached the council lodge, the great Molucho chiefs were already assembled. A compact crowd of Indian warriors silently surrounded the approaches of the lodge, an...

Leon's first care on reaching Santiago had been to inquire after the residence of Don Henriquez de Castago, and to inform him of the visit which General Soto-Mayor intended to p...