The Patagonians, with regard to whom travellers relate so many fables, are neither so gigantic nor so evil as generally represented.
They are sturdily independent. The least yoke galls them, and rather than submit to the will of a chief, they rush off into exile, and submit to the most terrible privations.
We were not ill-used by our captors, but I was at length alone. One of my companions went raving mad, the other committed suicide. I was kept alive, I believe, by the spirit of hope.
I was twenty years of age, and had a constitution of iron, as well as a buoyancy of spirits, a boldness and firmness, which saved me from myself, by permitting me to look upon my position in its true light. Cruel as it was, it was far from being desperate.
My first care was, by invariable complaisance, to secure the goodwill of the savages, in which I succeeded pretty well, more easily, indeed, than I should have dared to hope.
However, when in the evening after a whole day's journey in the interminable steppes of Patagonia, I threw myself, overcome with fatigue, before the bivouac fire, while the savages laughed and sang among themselves, I often felt my heart on the point of bursting by reason of the efforts I made to suppress my sighs.
How many times have I felt my courage fail! How many times has the thought of suicide burst upon my mind! But, always at the most critical moment, the hope of deliverance arose to put new life into my heart; my sufferings were calmed little by little, my frame ceased to be agitated, and I slept, murmuring in a gentle voice one of those national refrains which are, for the exile, a sweet and far-off echo of the absent country.
Fourteen months thus passed away, hour by hour, second by second, in an incessant and frightful torture.
Always on the watch to seize an opportunity of escaping, but not wishing to leave anything to the risk of failure, I had had the greatest care not to awaken the drowsy mistrust of the Patagonians. I always affected, on the contrary, not to wander too far from the tribe; so the Indians had at last come to allow me to enjoy comparative liberty amongst them; and instead of compelling me to follow them on foot, they decided of their own accord to allow me to mount on horseback.