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Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








THE PURPLE LAND

Being the Narrative of One Richard Lamb's Adventures in The Banda
Oriental, in South America, as Told By Himself

By W. H. Hudson

ILLUSTRATED BY

Keith Henderson


[Illustration: RICHARD]


Second Edition, 1904


NEW YORK




PREFACE

This work was first issued in 1885, by Messrs. Sampson Low, in two slim
volumes, with the longer, and to most persons, enigmatical title of _The
Purple Land That England Lost_. A purple land may be found in almost
any region of the globe, and 'tis of our gains, not our losses, we keep
count. A few notices of the book appeared in the papers, one or two of
the more serious literary journals reviewing it (not favourably) under
the heading of "Travels and Geography"; but the reading public cared
not to buy, and it very shortly fell into oblivion. There it might have
remained for a further period of nineteen years, or for ever, since the
sleep of a book is apt to be of the unawakening kind, had not certain
men of letters, who found it on a forgotten heap and liked it in spite
of its faults, or because of them, concerned themselves to revive it.

We are often told that an author never wholly loses his affection for a
first book, and the feeling has been likened (more than once) to that of
a parent towards a first-born. I have not said it, but in consenting to
this reprint I considered that a writer's early or unregarded work is
apt to be raked up when he is not standing by to make remarks. He may
be absent on a journey from which he is not expected to return. It
accordingly seemed better that I should myself supervise a new edition,
since this would enable me to remove a few of the numerous spots and
pimples which decorate the ingenious countenance of the work before
handing it on to posterity.

Besides many small verbal corrections and changes, the deletion of
some paragraphs and the insertion of a few new ones, I have omitted
one entire chapter containing the Story of a Piebald Horse, recently
reprinted in another book entitled _El Ombu_. I have also dropped the
tedious introduction to the former edition, only preserving, as an
appendix, the historical part, for the sake of such of my readers as may
like to have a few facts about the land that England lost.

W. H. H.

_September, 1904._

[FOR THE SECOND EDITION]


[Illustration: MARGARITA]

[Illustration: DOLORES]

[Illustration: PAQUITA]

[Illustration: TORIBIA]

[Illustration: MONICA]

[Illustration: ANITA]

[Illustration: SANTA COLOMA]

[Illustration: CANDELARIA]

[Illustration: DEMETRIA]

[Illustration: HILARIO]





CHAPTER I


Three chapters in the story of my life--three periods, distinct and well
defined, yet consecutive--beginning when I had not completed twenty-five
years and finishing before thirty, will probably prove the most eventful
of all. To the very end they will come back oftenest to memory and seem
more vivid than all the other years of existence--the four-and-twenty I
had already lived, and the, say, forty or forty-five--I hope it may
be fifty or even sixty--which are to follow. For what soul in this
wonderful, various world would wish to depart before ninety! The dark as
well as the light, its sweet and its bitter, make me love it.

Of the first of these three a word only need be written. This was the
period of courtship and matrimony; and though the experience seemed
to me then something altogether new and strange in the world, it must
nevertheless have resembled that of other men, since all men marry. And
the last period, which was the longest of the three, occupying fully
three years, could not be told. It was all black disaster. Three years
of enforced separation and the extremest suffering which the cruel law
of the land allowed an enraged father to inflict on his child and the
man who had ventured to wed her against his will. Even the wise may be
driven mad by oppression, and I that was never wise, but lived in and
was led by the passions and illusions and the unbounded self-confidence
of youth, what must it have been for me when we were cruelly torn
asunder; when I was cast into