cially, and judges more wrongly, than upon this very one. It is
a mistake to suppose that a people enjoys either peace or prosperity,
simply because it is quiet. There is quiet in Russia, but to its
millions of serfs war continuous and eternal; and the same may be said
of many other countries as well as Russia. To the poor slave, or even
to the over-taxed subject, peace is no peace, but a constant and
systematised struggle, often more pernicious in its effects than even
the anarchy of open war. A war of this kind numbers its slain by
millions, for the victims of famine are victims of _political crime_ on
the part of a nation's rulers. I have no time now to talk of these
things. Perhaps, boy reader, you and I may meet on this ground again,
and at no very distant period.

Well, it was not in the general rising of 1810 that Don Pablo had been
compromised, but previous to that. The influence of the European
Revolution of 1798 was felt even in distant Spanish America, and several
ebullitions occurred in different parts of that country at the same
time. They were premature; they were crushed. Those who had taken part
in them were hunted to the death. Death! death! was the war-cry of the
Spanish hirelings, and bitterly did they execute their vengeance on all
who were compromised. Don Pablo would have been a victim among others,
had he not had timely warning and escaped; but as it was, all his
property was taken by confiscation, and became the plunder of the
rapacious tyrant.

We are introduced to him just at the period of his escape. By the aid
of the faithful Guapo he had hastily collected a few things, and with
his wife and family fled in the night. Hence the incompleteness of his
travelling equipage. He had taken one of the most unfrequented paths--a
mere bridle-road--that led from Cuzco eastward over the Cordillera. His
intent was to gain the eastern slope of the Andes mountains, where he
might conceal himself for a time in the uninhabited woods of the Great
_Montana_, and towards this point was he journeying. By a _ruse_ he had
succeeded in putting the soldiers of the despot on a false track; but it
was not certain that they might not yet fall into the true one. No
wonder then, when he gazed back towards Cuzco, that his look was one of
apprehension and anxiety.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE POISON-TREES.

Following the rugged and winding path, the travellers had climbed to a
height of many thousand feet