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Purple Land |
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Title: The Purple Land Author: W. ... Sampson Low, in two slim volumes, with the longer, and to most persons, enigmatical title of _The Purple Land That England Lost_. A purple land may be found in almost any region of the globe, and tis of our gains, not our losses, we keep count. ... I have also dropped the tedious introduction to the former edition, only preserving, as an appendix, the historical part, for the sake of such of my readers as may like to have a few facts about the land that England lost. ... Three years of enforced separation and the extremest suffering which the cruel law of the land allowed an enraged father to inflict on his child and the man who had ventured to wed her against his will. ... It was grown hateful to me, and, flying from it, I found myself once more in that Purple Land where we had formerly taken refuge together, and which now seemed to my distracted mind a place of pleasant and peaceful memories. ... What would it have been now--this bright, winterless land, and this city commanding the entrance to the greatest river in the world? ... The land was their own, the men tended the cattle, of which they appeared to have a large number, while the women made cheeses, rising before daylight to milk the cows. ... There was no plantation about the house, not even a shade tree or cultivated plant of any description, but only some large _corrales_, or enclosures, for the cattle, of which there were six or seven thousand head on the land. ... The Mayordomo, or manager, Don Policarpo Santierra de Penalosa, which, roughly done into English, means Polycarp of the Holy Land abounding in Slippery Rocks, proved to be a very pleasant, affable person. ... His companion was a big, heavy man, with immense whiskers sprinkled with grey, who was evidently very drunk, for he was lying full-length on a bench, his face purple and swollen, snoring loudly. ... He at once offered to take me to his house with him, and gave a glowing account of the free, jovial life he led in company with several other Englishmen--sons of gentlemen, every one of them, he assured me--who had bought a piece of land and settled down to sheep-farming in this lonely district. ... The firing now began, most of the bullets hitting the wall only a few inches above the recumbent Captains head, scattering dust and bits of plaster over his purple face. ... But, after all, my position is not quite so hopeless as his; I have no brutalised, purple-nosed Briton sitting like a nightmare on my chest, pressing the life out of me. ... Assuming as wooden an expression as I could, I replied, "Yes, I have often observed the flower you speak of; it is fragrant, and to my mind surpasses in beauty the scarlet and purple varieties. ... Presently, through the purple and saffron-hued vapours in the western sky, the evening star appeared, large and luminous, the herald of swift-coming darkness; and then--weary, bruised, hungry, baffled, and despondent--I sat down to meditate on my forlorn position. ... There I found a big fire blazing merrily on the raised clay hearth in the centre of the large room, and seated near it an old grey-haired woman, a middle-aged, tall, dark-skinned dame in a purple dress--my hosts wife; a pale, pretty young woman, about sixteen years old, and a little girl. ... Very, very pretty she was; and she wore a white dress--whiter than milk, whiter than foam, and all embroidered with purple flowers; she had also white silk stockings, and scarlet shoes, bright as scarlet verbenas. ... "Alma thanked the fox very much and ran home as fast as she could, and when the bundle was opened she found in it a beautiful white dress, embroidered with purple flowers, a pair of scarlet shoes, silk stockings, and a string of great golden beads. ... He was booted and spurred, and over his uniform wore a white silk _poncho_ with purple fringe. ... Gently drawing off my coat, they subjected my wounded arm to a minute examination; their compassionate finger-tips--those of the lovely Dolores especially--feeling like a soft, cooling rain on the swollen, inflamed part, which had become quite purple. ... " Dolores laughed lightly and left the room, only to return in a few minutes with a dish full of ripe, purple clusters. ... Ah, senor, the bloodshed, the proscriptions, the infamies which they have brought on this land! ... The de la Barcas had once possessed great wealth in land in the country, and, I have heard, descended from an ancient noble family of Spain. ... There also grew the nightshade, with other solanaceous weeds, bearing little clusters of green and purple berries, wild oats, fox-tail grass, and nettles. ... Can you look on the blue skies above you and walk on the green grass where the white and purple flowers smile up at you and be deaf and blind to her beauty and to her great need? ... Would to God the earth would open and swallow up this land for ever, though I sank down into hell with it for the detestable crime of taking part in its pirate wars! ... Not a cloud appeared in the immense heavens; only, low down in the west, purple and rose-coloured vapours were beginning to form, staining the clear, intense white-blue sky about the sinking sun. ... Often when we were all day wading up to our thighs in the water, cutting the rushes down close to their roots, then carrying them in large bundles on our shoulders to land, he would cry, complaining bitterly of his hard lot. ... Some readers might imagine, after what I had related, that my sojourn in the Purple Land had quite brutalised me; I am happy to inform them that it was not so. ... I came here, worked, saved, bought land, cattle; married a wife, lived as I liked to live--am happy. ... On the slope of the hill, sixty yards from my standpoint, were some deep green, dwarf bushes, each bush looking in that still brilliant sunshine as if it had been hewn out of a block of malachite; and on the pale purple solanaceous flowers covering them some humble-bees were feeding. ... She was about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, and had an unutterably weary, desponding expression on her face, which was colourless as marble, except for the purple stains under her large, dark eyes. ... What, will God not leave one strong arm to strike at the tyrants breast--one Peralta in all this land! ... " She obeyed with alacrity, and old Santos wooden face almost relaxed into a grin when he received his share of the purple fluid (I can scarcely call it juice) which maketh glad the heart of man. ... I was back once more in the world of men and women, and could only think of the inhumanity of man to man, and of the infinite pain silently endured by many hearts in that Purple Land. ... The Peralta property extends all the way to the Rocha waters; five leagues of land, and there is none better in this department. ... Of the cattle only a remnant remains, but the land is a fortune for any man, and, when my old master dies, Dona Demetria inherits all. ... Now he wishes to marry Dona Demetria to make himself owner of the land. ... Grief has made her pale and thin, staining her face with purple under the eyes. ... At the _rancho_ I was received by a somewhat surly-looking young man, with long, intensely black hair and moustache, and who wore in place of a hat a purple cotton handkerchief tied about his head. ... She was singularly pretty, with a seductive, soft brown skin, ripe, pouting lips of a rich purple-red, and when she laughed, which happened very frequently, her teeth glistened like pearls. ... " He plucked off his purple headgear and scratched his raven head, then led me back to the kitchen to consult his wife, "For, senor," he said, "you have, by some fatality, selected her horse. ... "Do you know, Demetria," I said, "when the long winter evenings come, and I have plenty of leisure, I intend writing a history of my wanderings in the Banda Oriental, and I will call my book _The Purple Land;_ for what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children? ... A new colour came into her pale cheeks; the purple stains telling of anxious days and sleepless nights faded away; she smiled brightly and was full of animation, so that on that long journey, whether resting in the noonday shade or swiftly cantering over the green turf, I could not have had a more agreeable companion than Demetria. ... Two days later, early in the morning, I heard that she was safe on board; and, having thus baffled the scoundrel Hilario, on whose ophidian skull I should have been very pleased to set my heel, and having still an idle day before me, I went once more to visit the mountain, to take from its summit my last view of the Purple Land where I had spent so many eventful days. ... I also remembered with exceeding bitterness that my visit to this land had been the cause of great and perhaps lasting sorrow to one noble heart. ... And if that distinctive flavour cannot be had along with the material prosperity resulting from Anglo-Saxon energy, I must breathe the wish that this land may never know such prosperity. ... Even in our ultra-civilised condition at home we do periodically escape back to nature; and, breathing the fresh mountain air and gazing over vast expanses of ocean and land, we find that she is still very much to us. ... In name only is your Purple Land a republic; its constitution is a piece of waste paper, its government an oligarchy tempered by assassination and revolution. ... Here the lord of many leagues of land and of herds unnumbered sits down to talk with the hired shepherd, a poor, bare-footed fellow in his smoky _rancho_, and no class or caste difference divides them, no consciousness of their widely different positions chills the warm current of sympathy between two human hearts. ... Farewell, beautiful land of sunshine and storm, of virtue and of crime; may the invaders of the future fare on your soil like those of the past and leave you in the end to your own devices; may the chivalrous instinct of Santa Coloma, the passion of Dolores, the loving-kindness of Candelaria still live in your children to brighten their lives with romance and beauty; may the blight of our superior civilisation never fall on your wild flowers, or the yoke of our progress be laid on your herdsman--careless, graceful, music-loving as the birds--to make him like the sullen, abject peasant of the Old World! ... "Ah, with you foreigners it is just the same--land or water," he continued. ... Yes, a large _estancia_, impoverished, ruined, if you like, but still a very large tract of land. ... Next morning we arrived at Buenos Ayres, and cast anchor about two miles from shore, for that was as near the land as we could get. ... Those wild, troubled days in the Purple Land now seemed to my mind peaceful, happy days, and the bitter days with no pleasure in them were only now about to begin. ... " APPENDIX HISTORY OF THE BANDA ORIENTAL The country, called in this work the Purple Land, was discovered by Magellan in the year 1500, and he called the hill, or mountain, which gives its name to the capital, Monte Vidi. |
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