The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-07-06

, and no sign came from the unknown
land
Now, according to news just receiv-
ed in America, Capt Rojas, of the
Paraguay army, who started from the
east to search for him, has returned to
Villa Hayes-named after President
| Hayes to commemorate his statement
of the Paraguay Argentina boundary
dispute with the almost positive infor-
nation that this expedition also has
been destroyed. Capt. Rojas found
that it had approached the vicinity of
the scene of Ibarreta's death, and
| there, on the banks of the Pilcomayo
river, had persisted, to prove anew that
the River of Death still defies the
worlds efforts to dispel its mystery.
A Land of Awe.
Awe holds the man who enters the
brooding silence of FL Gran Chaco's
primeval places. For in the forests,
great with centuries on centuries of
unchecked growth there is neither
sunlight or freedom of winds or sing
ing of birds. The waters roar sullenly.
The air is heavy with moisture, and
neither in the morning or the after
noon does daylight find it's way
through the enormous, fantastic mass
es of the eternal forest. Gloom and
gloom again-never less than twilight
in the brightest places and as black as
night in the darkest-shrouds the path
of the intruder.
A hush so great that it burdens the
sense as with physical oppression
reigns hour after hour, day after day,
week after week. Like the terrifying
hush before a great storm, it rests on
the land and makes it a place of fear.
The bird fits through it silently. ST.
beasts creep.
The Cry of the Lost Soul.
Only now and again is that hush of
dread broken. A terrible cry, a wall
that rises and falls and floats away
awfully resounds through the dim
aisles. Then the Indians hastily muir
muir incantations-for this, they be-
lieve, is the cry of lost soul, wander
ing, wandering. in torment eternal
through the land Of the devils of the
woods. 1t is vain for explorers to tell
them that the cry is that of a bird
fairly well known to science. 1t is a
damned soul, utterly damned, so they
are convinced
Souls damned and suffering the pur-
gatory of ice, too, are the grotesque,
frightening, shrouded forms of ice that
stands on the slopes of the Cordilleras
in that land. Strange figures are these,
from three to six feet high, being kept
from melting by the shadow of the
snow-capped mountains in the day
and by icy winds that blow down like
hurricanes in the night. "Nieve Peni-
tentes," the Indians call them, shud-
dering when they see them from affair."
So, too, they shudder when once in a
visible a sudden, tremendous cracking
| and splintering echoes with startling
| suddenness through this land of fore
| podinG silence. Even white men, ar
mored against superstitious fear, feel
their nerves start when that silence of
the grave is broken thus, though they
| believe it to be due only to the sudden
! Eurling downward of some ancient
| tree. But the Indians know it to be
| otherwise. cit is the devil of the
woods" they say with trembling lips.
1.-THE devil Of the woods is uprooting
tree for a club to hunt with tonight"
| And he Is well-steeled man who,
| surrounded by the unknown, sur
rounded by the terror of his living
companions, does not, in spite of him
self, feel the fear of the Land of Mys-
terry steal over him and claim him for
its own.