through a hundred and ten degrees of latitude. And he was
also comforted by the fact that the air seemed to him to grow constantly
warmer; and this happened, because, in ascending towards the north, he
was slowly approaching the tropics. At great distances apart there were
tiny groups of houses with a petty shop; and he bought something to eat.
He encountered men on horseback; every now and then he saw women and
children seated on the ground, motionless and grave, with faces
entirely new to him, of an earthen hue, with oblique eyes and prominent
cheek-bones, who looked at him intently, and accompanied him with their
gaze, turning their heads slowly like automatons. They were Indians.

The first day he walked as long as his strength would permit, and slept
under a tree. On the second day he made considerably less progress, and
with less spirit. His shoes were dilapidated, his feet wounded, his
stomach weakened by bad food. Towards evening he began to be alarmed. He
had heard, in Italy, that in this land there were serpents; he fancied
that he heard them crawling; he halted, then set out on a run, and with
cold chills in all his bones. At times he was seized with a profound
pity for himself, and he wept silently as he walked. Then he thought,
"Oh, how much my mother would suffer if she knew that I am afraid!" and
this thought restored his courage. Then, in order to distract his
thoughts from fear, he meditated much of her; he recalled to mind her
words when she had set out from Genoa, and the movement with which she
had arranged the coverlet beneath his chin when he was in bed, and when
he was a baby; for every time that she took him in her arms, she said to
him, "Stay here a little while with me"; and thus she remained for a
long time, with her head resting on his, thinking, thinking.

And he said to himself: "Shall I see thee again, dear mother? Shall I
arrive at the end of my journey, my mother?" And he walked on and on,
among strange trees, vast plantations of sugar-cane, and fields without
end, always with those blue mountains in front of him, which cut the sky
with their exceedingly lofty crests. Four days, five days--a week,
passed. His strength was rapidly declining, his feet were bleeding.
Finally, one evening at sunset, they said to him:--

"Tucuman is fifty miles from here."

He uttered a cry of joy, and hastened his steps, as though he had, in
that moment, regained all his lost vigor. But it was a brief illu