登陆注册
5289200000037

第37章 THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND(1)

Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador's Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the Country of the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thither indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever from the exploring feet of men. But one of these early settlers had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child and all the friends and possessions he had left up there, and start life over again in the lower world. He started it again but ill, blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day.

He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child. The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire--sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. Far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side. In this valley it neither rained nor snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that irrigation would spread over all the valley space. The settlers did well indeed there. Their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thing marred their happiness. Yet it was enough to mar it greatly. A strange disease had come upon them and had made all the children born to them there--and, indeed, several older children also--blind. It was to seek some charm or antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger and difficulty returned down the gorge. In those days, in such cases, men did not think of germs and infections, but of sins, and it seemed to him that the reason of this affliction must he in the negligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley. He wanted a shrine--a handsome, cheap, effectual shrine--to be erected in the valley; he wanted relics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects and mysterious medals and prayers. In his wallet he had a bar of native silver for which he would not account; he insisted there was none in the valley with something of the insistence of an inexpert liar. They had all clubbed their money and ornaments together, having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy them holy help against their ill. I figure this dim-eyed young mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutched feverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; I can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me, save that I know of his evil death after several years. Poor stray from that remoteness! The stream that had once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one may still hear to-day.

And amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course. The old became groping, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to them never saw at all. But life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns nor briers, with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. The seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noticed their loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither and thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on. They had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which they made carefully in stoves of stone. They were a simple strain of people at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with the Spanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the arts of old Peru and of its lost philosophy. Generation followed generation. They forgot many things; they devised many things.

同类推荐
  • 闽海纪略

    闽海纪略

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 唐玄宗御制道德真经疏二

    唐玄宗御制道德真经疏二

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • THE HAPPY PRINCE

    THE HAPPY PRINCE

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 性空臻禅师语录

    性空臻禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 道咸同光四朝奏议选辑

    道咸同光四朝奏议选辑

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 花未说

    花未说

    为救三生门,江篱违背诺言,向仇人低头。一男一女共闯江湖,一个尖酸刻薄,一个面冷心热。连环杀人案迭起,母亲的遗物被盗,牵扯出了十年前父亲的真正死因。各路人马纷纷出手,江篱身边杀机四伏。欺骗、谎言,推翻以往的既定事实。天下会否大变?江篱能否及时抽身,还是会越陷越深?
  • 天生“幸运心”

    天生“幸运心”

    裴小然是一个普通的人,如果硬要说她有什么不一样的话,那就是她拥有一颗天生好运的“幸运心”,这让她无论做什么都特别顺利,但正因如此,她被卷入了一场充满欺骗的阴谋中。她没想到,闻名全世界的卡斯兰特学院,除了她以外的学生竟然都不是人类!她的好友是一朵花,她的同学是精灵,她的死对头则是神与魔的结合!好在她接受能力强,才没有因此崩溃,而且能近距离接触神秘生物,想想还有点小兴奋呢!不过,有人告诉她,她的幸运将为卡斯兰特带来厄运,也将为她带来厄运!欺骗、利用、谎言……到底有谁是真心待她?
  • 常人的超时空之旅

    常人的超时空之旅

    平凡的小人物,不平凡的遭遇,一次次奇遇,拥有了不平凡的能力,到底是应该变成欲望和野心,还是应该转换成强大的责任感?在人生中领悟人生,小人物的时空之旅。
  • 百岁所思

    百岁所思

    《百岁所思》所收主要是老人百岁前后之作,而兼收的零篇作品,最早是1985年《美国归来话家常》、1987年《漫谈“西化”》,以及1989年初的《两访新加坡》和《科学的一元性-一纪念“五四”运动七十周年》,从中已可看到后来一些观点的端倪。而先生最可贵的思想贡献则似主要见于20世纪90年代,直到21世纪初形成文思泉涌之势,多半首发于《群言》杂志,正是资深编辑叶稚珊女士主持编务的时候吧,我也是在那前后才于浏览有关周有光夫人张允和女士报道的同时,特别注意或日“发现”了周有光这一支健笔老而弥坚的锋芒。
  • 仿佛

    仿佛

    饥饿会让人发疯,也会失去一切激情。确实是这样。乡村漫画家刘德朴以往很能和自己聊,像一个神经病似的,自己和自己对话。这或许与他从事艺术创作的行当分不开。但曾经天马行空的想象力,忽然迟钝起来,也不知道是因为最近心情不好所致,还是饥饿造成的。总之是,原来内心可以分出的几个自己,互相唠叨得昏天黑地,现在都不知道龟缩在哪里去了,只剩下一个原装的老化了的自我,被去娘家已经住了半个月的老婆撂在家里,每天肚子空落落,饭也懒得做,瞟了眼墙上镜子里自己的那张脸,都菜黄菜黄的了。于是苦笑一下,暗自自嘲了一番,就去做饭了。
  • 将门毒女

    将门毒女

    一朝穿越,素问成为将军府上被丢弃在外的嫡女。她的父亲遗弃她,祖母厌恶她,姨娘设计她,母亲被逼疯,兄长被践踏。素问涅槃重生,既然你们今日无情,就别怪我从此无意。面对这个冰冷无情的家族,她誓要护母亲,保兄长,惩贱人,拿回属于自己的一切,挣得自己的一片天。庶兄为非作歹,她打断他的腿,毁他一世前程。庶姐妹伪善,她撕开她的美人皮,让她们无脸再见世人。姨娘歹毒,她亲手送她上黄泉路。父亲冷漠,她要他亲自下跪当众认错。她运筹帷幄,步步紧逼,誓将那些歹人全部打倒,她要他们知道,她的地盘,她做主!
  • 大明玄天上帝瑞应图录

    大明玄天上帝瑞应图录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 独家钟情:带着婚约闯心房

    独家钟情:带着婚约闯心房

    她只是一个图书馆员?错!不仅仅吃定军长,搞定一片区的黑白道,还能轻而易举名利双收,大获广电局好评。追求爱情,勇闯军长心房的路途中,如果再出现一位志同道合的伙伴,开一家火锅店,那才到了称霸全场的时候!正是真爱无敌,爱上便不要错过。
  • 一分钟破案

    一分钟破案

    人的大脑就像一把刀子,你越磨砺它,它就越锋利。能让人的大脑达到这一满意效果的就是罪犯和警察之间的博弈游戏。探案是一种高智商的活动,受“道高一尺,魔高一丈”规律制约,游戏的参与者总是在制造更新更绝妙的方法,企图制服对方。书中汇集中外精锐探案故事,精中选精,以新奇、精致、逻辑力强为鲜明特征,言简意赅,妙趣横生,在独飨趣味盎然的推理文字盛宴的同时,既可锻炼读者的观察能力、分析能力、推理能力和创造能力,又可满足读者的好奇之心。
  • 金钱的革命

    金钱的革命

    具体对尊重金钱就是尊重你自己、掌握现代理财方法、花钱的学问等十四章内容进行了阐述。