Introduced by the latter, our explorers made a kind of triumphal entry into the village.  The old Indian women dropped their spinning, the naked children ceased to play with the pigs and began to play with the garments and equipage of the visitors, and a couple of blind men, who were leading each other, remarked that they were glad to see them.

Garcia the polyglot, radiant with importance, lost no time in dragging his guests toward his own residence, a large straw thatch surmounting walls of open-work, which took the fancy of the travelers from the singular trophy attached above the door.  This trophy was composed of the heads of bucks and rams, with those of the fox and the ounce, where the shrunken skin displayed the pointed sierra of the teeth, while the horns of oxen and goats, set end to end around the borders, formed dark and rigid festoons:  all vacancies were filled up with the forms of bats, spread-eagled and nailed fast, from the smallest variety to the large, man-attacking vespertilio.  As a contrast to this exterior decoration, the inside was severely simple:  it was even a little bare.  A partition of bamboo divided the hut into kitchen and bed-room, and that was all.  Into the latter of these apartments Pepe Garcia dragged the saddles of his guests, and in the former his two twin-daughters, melancholy little half-breeds in ragged petticoats, assisted their father to prepare for the wanderers a hunter’s supper.

Every moment, in a dark corner or behind the backs of the company, Garcia was observed caressing these little girls in secret.  Being rallied on his tenderness, he observed that the twins were the double pledge of a union “longer happy than was usual,” and the only survivors of fifteen darlings whom he had given to the world in the various countries whither his wandering fortunes had led him.  Still explaining and multiplying his caresses, the man of family went on with his exertions as cook, and in due time announced the meal.

This festival consisted of sweet potatoes baked in the ashes, and steaks of bear broiled over the coals.  The latter viand was repulsed with horror by the colonel, who in the effeminacy of a city life at Cuzeo had never tasted anything more outlandish than monkey.  Seeing his companions eating without scruple, however, the valiant warrior extended his tin plate with a silent gesture of application.  The first mouthful appeared hard to swallow, but at the second, looking round at his fellow-travelers with surprise and joy, he gave up his prejudices, and marked off the remainder of his steak with wonderful swiftness.  Standing behind his boarders, Pepe Garcia had been watching the play of jaws and expressions of face with some uneasiness, but when the colonel gave in his adhesion his doubts were removed, and he smiled agreeably, flattered in his double quality of hunter and cook.