ed Valle Hermoso. It was like an alpine village set
in a tropical garden. The mud houses were overgrown with greenery, the
rocks mantled with flowers, the nearer heights crested with noble trees,
whose great white trunks, as smooth and round as the marble pillars of an
eastern palace, were roofed with domes of purple leaves.

Through the valley and between verdant banks and blooming orchards
meandered a silvery brook, either an affluent or a source of one of the
mighty streams which find their homes in the great Atlantic.

The mission was a village of tame Indians, whose ancestors had been
"Christianized," by Fray Ignacio's Jesuit predecessor. But the Jesuits had
been expelled from South America nearly half a century before. My host
belonged to the order of St. Francis. The spiritual guide, as well as the
earthly providence of his flock, he managed their affairs in this world
and prepared them for the next. And they seemed nothing loath. A more
listless, easy-going community than the Indians of the Happy Valley it
were difficult to imagine. The men did little but smoke, sleep, and
gamble. All the real work was done by the women, and even they took care
not to over-exert themselves. All were short-lived. The women began to age
at twenty, the men were old at twenty-five and generally died about
thirty, of general decay, said the priest. In my opinion of pure laziness.
Exertion is a condition of healthy existence; and the most active are
generally the longest lived.

Nevertheless, Fray Ignacio was content with his people. They were docile
and obedient, went regularly to church, had a great capacity for listening
patiently to long sermons, and if they died young they got so much the
sooner to heaven.

All the same, Fray Ignacio was not so free from care as might be supposed.
He had two anxieties. The Happy Valley was so far untrue to its name as to
be subject to earthquakes; but as none of a very terrific character had
occurred for a quarter of a century he was beginning to hope that it would
be spared any further visitations for the remainder of his lifetime. A
much more serious trouble were the occasional visits of bands of wild
Indians--_Indios misterios_, he called them; what they called themselves
he had no idea. Neither had he any definite idea whence they came; from
the other side of the Cordilleras, some people thought. But they neither
pillaged nor murdered--except when they were resisted or in drink, for
which