From the dribbling1 warfare2 described in the last chapter, with clouds of winged things for principal enemy, let us go back once more to that sterner conflict with hostile men, in which the isolated3 little colony has so often been involved during its century of existence. One episode from its eventful history I wish to relate, for in this instance the Patagonians had, for once, to oppose a foreign and civilised foe4. The story is so strange, even in the romantic annals of South America, as to seem almost incredible. The main facts are, however, to be found in historical documents. The details given here were taken from the lips of persons living on the spot, and who had been familiar with the story from childhood.
Very early in this century the Brazilians became convinced that in the Argentine nation they had a determined5 foe to their aggressive and plundering6 policy, and for many years they waged war against Buenos Ayres, putting forth7 all their feeble energies in operations by land and sea to crush their troublesome neighbour, until 1828, when they finally abandoned the contest. During this war the Imperialists conceived the idea of capturing the Patagonian settlement of El Carmen, which they knew to be quite unprotected. Three ships of war, with a large number of soldiers, were sent out to effect this insignificant8 conquest, and in due time reached the Rio Negro. One of the ships came to grief on the bar, which is very difficult; and there it eventually became a total wreck9. The other two succeeded in getting safely into the river. The troops, to the number of five hundred men, were disembarked and sent on to capture the town, which is twenty miles distant from the sea. The ships at the same time proceeded up the river, though it was scarcely thought that their cooperation would be required to take so weak a place as the Carmen. Happily for the colonists10, the Imperial armada found the navigation difficult, and one of the ships ran on to a sandbank about half-way to the town; the other proceeded alone, only to arrive when it was all over with the land force. This force, finding it impossible to continue its march near the river, owing to the steep hills intersected by valleys and ravines and covered with a dense11 forest of thorns, was compelled to take a circuitous12 route leading it several miles away from the water. Tidings of the approaching army soon reached the Carmen, and all able-bodied men within call were quickly mustered13 in the fort. They numbered only seventy, but the Patagonians were determined to defend themselves. Women and children were brought into the fort; guns were loaded and placed in position; then the commander had a happy inspiration, and all the strong women were made to display themselves on the walls in male attire14. Dummy15 soldiers, hastily improvised16 from blocks of wood, bolsters17, and other materials, were also placed at intervals18; so that when the Brazilians arrived in sight they were surprised to see four or five hundred men, as they thought, on the ramparts before them. From the high ground behind the town where they had halted they commanded a view of the river for several miles, but the expected ships were not yet in sight. The day had been oppressively hot, without a cloud, and that march of about thirty miles over the waterless desert had exhausted20 the men. Probably they had been suffering from sea-sickness during the voyage; at any rate, they were now mad with thirst, worn out, and not in a fit state to attack a position seemingly so strongly defended. They determined to retire, and wait for a day or two, and then attack the place in concert with the ships. To the joy and amazement21 of the Patagonians, their formidable enemy left without firing a shot. Another happy inspiration came to the aid of the commander, and as soon as the Brazilians had disappeared behind the rising ground, his seventy men were hastily dispatched to collect and bring in all the horses pasturing in the valley. When the invaders22 had been about three or four hours on their spiritless return march, the thunder of innumerable hoofs23 was heard behind them, and looking back, they beheld24 a great army, as they imagined in their terror, charging down upon them. These were their seventy foes25 spread in an immense half-moon, in the hollow of which over a thousand horses were being driven along at frantic26 speed. The Brazilians received their equine enemy with a discharge of musketry; but though many horses were slain27 or wounded, the frantic yells of the drivers behind still urged them on, and in a few moments, blind with panic, they were trampling28 down the invaders. In the meantime the Patagonians were firing into the confused mass of horses and men; and by a singular chance — a miracle it was held to be at the time — the officer commanding the Imperial troops was shot dead by a stray bullet; then the men threw down their arms and surrendered at discretion29 — five hundred disciplined soldiers of the Empire to seventy poor Patagonians, mostly farmers, tradesmen, and artisans. The honour of the Empire was very little to those famishing wretches30 crying out with frothing mouths for water instead of quarter. Leaving their muskets31 scattered32 about the plain, they were marched by their captors down to the river, which was about four miles off, and reached it at a point just where the bank slopes down between the Parrots’ Cliff on one side, and the house I resided in on the other. Like a herd33 of cattle maddened with thirst, they rushed into the water, trampling each other down in their haste, so that many were smothered34, while others, pushed too far out by the surging mass behind, were swept from their feet by the swift current and drowned. When they had drunk their fill, they were driven like cattle to the Carmen and shut up within the fort. In the evening the ship arrived before the town, and, going a little too near the shore on the opposite side, ran aground. The men in her were quickly apprised35 of the disaster which had overtaken the land force; meanwhile the resolute36 Patagonians, concealed38 amongst the trees on the shore, began to pepper the deck with musket-balls; the Brazilians, in terror for their lives, leaped into the water and swam to land; and when darkness fell the colonists had crowned their brave day’s work by the capture of the Imperial war-vessel ‘Itaparica’. No doubt it was soon pulled to pieces, good building material being rather expensive on the Rio Negro; a portion of the wreck, however, still lies in the river, and often, when the tide was low, and those old brown timbers came up above the surface, like the gaunt fossil ribs39 of some gigantic Pliocene monster, I have got out of my boat and stood upon them experiencing a feeling of great satisfaction. Thus the awful war-cloud burst, and the little colony, by pluck and cunning and readiness to strike at the proper moment, saved itself from the disgrace of being conquered by the infamous40 Empire of the tropics.
During my residence at the house alongside the Parrots’ Cliff, one of our neighbours I was very much interested in was a man named Sosa. He was famed for an almost preternatural keenness of sight, had great experience of the wild life of the frontier, and was always employed as a scout41 in times of Indian warfare. He was also a celebrated42 horse-thief. His horse-stealing propensities43 were ineradicable, and had to be winked44 at on account of his usefulness; so that he was left in a great measure to his own devices. He was, in fact, a fox hired to act as watch-dog to the colony in times of danger; and though the victims of his numberless thefts had always been anxious to wreak45 personal vengeance46 on him, his vulpine sagacity had so far enabled him to escape them all. My interest in him arose from the fact that he was the son of a man whose name figures in Argentine history. Sosa’s father was an illiterate47 gaucho48 — a man of the plains — possessing faculties49 so keen that to ordinary beings his feats50 of vision and hearing, and his sense of direction on the monotonous51 pampas, seemed almost miraculous52. As he also possessed53 other qualities suitable to a leader of men in a semi-savage54 region, he rose in time to the command of the south-western frontier, where his numerous victories over the Indians gave him so great a prestige that the jealousy55 of the Dictator Rosas — the Nero of South America, as he was called by his enemies — was roused, and at his instigation Sosa was removed by means of a cup of poison. The son, though in all other respects a degenerate56 being, inherited his father’s wonderful senses. One instance of his keen-sightedness which I heard struck me as very curious. In 1861 Sosa had found it prudent57 to disappear for a season from the colony, and in the company of five or six more gauchos58 — also offenders59 against the law, who had flown to the refuge of the desert — he amused himself by hunting ostriches60 along the Rio Colorado. On the 12th of March the hunters were camping beside a grove62 of willows63 in the valley, and about nine o’clock that evening, while seated round the fire roasting their ostrich61 meat, Sosa suddenly sprang to his feet and held his open hand high above his head for some moments. “There is not a breath of wind blowing,” he exclaimed, “yet the leaves of the trees are trembling. What can this portend64?” The others stared at the trees, but could see no motion, and began to laugh and jeer65 at him. Presently he sat down again, remarking that the trembling had ceased; but during the rest of the evening he seemed very much disturbed in his mind. He remarked repeatedly that such a thing had never happened in his experience before, for, he said, he could feel a breath of wind before the leaves felt it, and there had been no wind; he feared that it was a warning of some disaster about to overtake their party. The disaster was not for them. On that evening, when Sosa sprang up terrified and pointed66 to the leaves which to the others appeared motionless, occurred the earthquake which destroyed the distant city of Mendoza, crushing twelve thousand people to death in its fall. That the subterranean67 wave extended east to the Plata, and southwards into Patagonia, was afterwards known, for in the cities of Rosario and Buenos Ayres clocks stopped, and a slight shock was also experienced in the Carmen on the Rio Negro.
My host, whose Christian68 name was Ventura, being a Patagonian by birth, and not far off fifty years old, must, I imagined, have seen a thousand things worth relating, and I frequently importuned69 him to tell some of his early experiences in the settlement. But somehow he invariably drifted into amorous70 and gambling71 reminiscences, interesting in their way, some of them, but they were not the kind of recollections I wished to hear. The empire of his affections had been divided between Cupid and cards; and apparently72 everything he had seen or experienced in fifty eventful years, unless it had some relation to one of these two divinities, was clean forgotten — cast away from him like the ends of the innumerable cigarettes he had been smoking all his life. Once, however, a really interesting adventure of his boyhood was recalled accidentally to his mind. He came home one evening from the Carmen, where he had been spending the day, and during supper told me the following story.
When he was about sixteen years old he was sent one day with four others — three lads like himself, and a middle-aged73 man named Marcos in charge of them — with a herd of horses required for military service at a place twenty-five leagues up the river. For, at that period, every person was at the beck and call of the commander of the colony. Half-way to their destination there was a corral, or cattle-enclosure, standing74 two or three hundred yards from the river, but miles away from any habitation. They drove their animals into the corral, and, after unsaddling and turning loose the beasts they had ridden, were about to catch fresh horses, when a troop of Indians was spied charging down upon them. “Follow me, boys!” shouted Marcos, for there was no time to lose, and away they rushed to the river, throwing off their clothes as they ran. In a few moments they were in the water swimming for life, the shouts of the savages75 ringing in their ears. The river at this point was about eight hundred feet broad, with a strong current, and two of the lads dared not venture across, but escaped, diving and swimming along under the shadow of the bank like a couple of water-rats or wounded ducks, and finally concealed themselves in a reed bed at some distance. The others, led by Marcos, being good swimmers like most of the Patagonians, struck boldly out for the opposite shore. But when they approached it and were beginning to congratulate themselves on their escape, they were suddenly confronted with another party of mounted Indians, standing a few yards back from the margin76 and quietly waiting their arrival. They turned and swam away to the middle of the stream once more: here one of them, a youth named Damian, began to exclaim that he was getting tired, and would sink unless Marcos would save him. Marcos told him to save himself if he could; then Damian, bitterly reproaching him for his selfishness, declared that he would swim back to the side they had started from and give himself up to the Indians. Naturally they made no objection, being unable to help him; and so Damian left them, and when the Indians saw him approaching they got off their horses and came down to the margin, their lances in their hands. Of course Damian knew right well that savages seldom burden themselves with a male captive when they happen to be out on the war-path; but he was a clever boy, and though death by steel was more painful than death by drowning, there was still a faint chance that his captors might have compassion77 on him. He began, in fact, to appeal to their mercy from the moment he abandoned his companion. “Indians! friends! brothers!” he shouted aloud from the water. “Do not kill me: in heart I am an Indian like one of yourselves, and no Christian. My skin is white, I know; but I hate my own race, to escape from them has always been my one desire. To live with the Indians I love, in the desert, that is the only wish of my heart. Spare me, brothers, take me with you, and I will serve you all my life. Let me live with you, hunt with you, fight with you — especially against the hated Christians78.”
In the middle of the river Marcos lifted up his face and laughed hoarsely79 to hear this eloquent80 address; though they expected to see poor Damian thrust through with spears the very next moment, he could not help laughing. They watched him arrive, still loudly crying out for mercy, astonishing them very much with his oratorical81 powers, for Damian had not hitherto made any display of this kind of talent. The Indians took him by the hands and drew him out of the water, then, surrounding him, walked him away to the corral, and from that moment Damian disappeared from the valley; for on a search being made afterwards, not even his bones, picked clean by vultures and foxes, could be found.
After seeing the last of their comrade, and keeping themselves afloat with the least possible exertion82, Marcos and Ventura were carried down the stream by the swift current till they gained a small island in the middle of the river. With the drift-wood found on it they constructed a raft, binding83 the sticks together with long grass and rushes, and on it they floated down-stream to the inhabited portion of the valley, and so eventually made their escape.
The reason why my host told me this story instead of one of his usual love intrigues84 or gambling adventures was because that very day he had seen Damian once more, just returned to the settlement where he had so long been forgotten by everyone. Thirty years of exposure to the sun and wind of the desert had made him so brown, while in manner and speech he had grown so like an Indian, that the poor amateur savage found it hard at first to establish his identity. His relations had, however, been poor, and had long passed away, leaving nothing for him to inherit, so that there was no reason to discredit85 his strange story. He related that when the Indians drew him from the water and carried him back to the corral they disagreed among themselves as to what they should do to him. Luckily one of them understood Spanish, and translated to the others the substance of Damian’s speech delivered from the water. When they questioned their captive he invented many other ingenious lies, saying that he was a poor orphan86 boy, and that the cruel treatment his master subjected him to had made him resolve to escape to the Indians. The only feeling he had towards his own race, he assured them, was one of undying animosity; and he was ready to vow87 that if they would only let him join their tribe he would always be ready for a raid on the Christian settlement. To see the entire white race swept away with fire and steel was, in fact, the cherished hope of his heart. Their savage breasts were touched with his piteous tale of sufferings; his revengeful feelings were believed to be genuine, and they took him to their own home, where he was permitted to share in the simple delights of the aborigines. They belonged to a tribe very powerful at that time, inhabiting a district called Las Manzanas — that is, the Apple Country — situated88 at the sources of the Rio Negro in the vicinity of the Andes.
There is a tradition that shortly after the conquest of South America a few courageous89 Jesuit priests crossed over from Chili90 to the eastern slopes of the Andes to preach Christianity to the tribes there, and that they took with them implements91 of husbandry, grain, and seeds of European fruits. The missionaries92 soon met their death, and all that remained of their labours among the heathen were a few apple-trees they had planted. These trees found a soil and climate so favourable93, that they soon began to propagate spontaneously, becoming exceedingly abundant. Certain it is that now, after two or three centuries of neglect by man, these wild apple-trees still yield excellent fruit, which the Indians eat, and from which they also make a fermented94 liquor they call ‘chi-chi’.
To this far-off fertile region Damian was taken to lead the kind of life he professed95 to love. Here were hill, forest, and clear swift river, great undulating plains, the pleasant pasture-lands of the huanaco, ostrich, and wild horse; and beyond all in the west the stupendous mountain range of the Cordilleras — a realm of enchantment96 and ever-changing beauty. Very soon, however, when the novelty of the new life had worn off, together with the exultation97 he had experienced at his escape from cruel death, his heart began to be eaten up with secret grief, and he pined for his own people again. Escape was impossible: to have revealed his true feelings would have exposed him to instant cruel death. To take kindly98 to the savage way of life, outwardly at least, was now his only course. With cheerful countenance99 he went forth on long hunting expeditions in the depth of winter, exposed all day to bitter cold and furious storms of wind and sleet100, cursed and beaten for his awkwardness by his fellow-huntsmen; at night stretching his aching limbs on the wet stony101 ground, with the rug they permitted him to wear for only covering. When the hunters were unlucky it was customary to slaughter102 a horse for food. The wretched animal would be first drawn103 up by its hind19 legs and suspended from the branches of a great tree, so that all the blood might be caught, for this is the chief delicacy104 of the Patagonian savage. An artery105 would be exposed in the neck and the spouting106 blood caught in large earthen vessels107; then, when the savages gathered round to the feast, poor Damian would be with them to drink his share of the abhorred108 liquid, hot from the heart of the still living brute109. In autumn, when the apples were fermented in pits dug in the earth and lined with horse hides to prevent the juice from escaping, he would take part, as became a true savage, in the grand annual drinking bouts110. The women would first go round carefully gathering111 up all knives, spears, bolas, or other weapons dangerous in the hands of drunken men, to carry them away into the forest, where they would conceal37 themselves with the children. Then for days the warriors112 would give themselves up to the joys of intoxication113; and at such times unhappy Damian would come in for a large share of ridicule114, blows, and execrations; the Indians being full of boisterous115 fun or else truculent116 in their cups, and loving above all things to have a ‘Koko-huinche’, or “white fool,” for a butt117.
At length, when he came to man’s estate, was fluent in their language, and outwardly in all things like a savage, a wife was bestowed118 on him, and she bore him several children. Those he had first known as grown up or old men gradually died off, were killed, or drifted away; children who had always known Damian as one of the tribe grew to manhood, and it was forgotten that he had ever been a Christian and a captive. Yet still, with his helpmate by his side, weaving rugs and raiment for him or ministering to his wants — for the Indian wife is always industrious119 and the patient, willing, affectionate slave of her lord — and with all his young barbarians120 at play on the grass before his hut, he would sit in the waning121 sunlight oppressed with sorrow, dreaming the old dreams he could not banish122 from his heart. And at last, when his wife began to grow wrinkled and dark-skinned, as a middle-aged Indian mother invariably does, and when his children were becoming men, the gnawing123 discontent at his breast made him resolve to leave the tribe and the life he secretly hated. He joined a hunting-party going towards the Atlantic coast, and after travelling for some days with them his opportunity came, when he secretly left them and made his way alone to the Carmen.
“And there he is,” concluded Ventura, when he had told the story, with undisguised contempt for Damian in his tone, “an Indian and nothing less! Does he imagine he can ever be like one of us after living that life for thirty years? If Marcos were alive, how he would laugh to see Damian back again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, solemn as a cacique, brown as old leather, and calling himself a white man! Yet here he says he will remain, and here amongst Christians he will die. Fool, why did he not escape twenty years ago, or, having remained so long in the desert, why has he now come back where he is not wanted!”
Ventura was very unsympathetic, and appeared to have no kindly feelings left for his old companion-inarms, but I was touched with the story I had heard. There was something pathetic in the life of that poor returned wanderer, an alien now to his own fellow-townsmen, homeless amidst the pleasant vineyards, poplar groves124, and old stone houses where he had first seen the light; listening to the bells from the church tower as he had listened to them in childhood, and perhaps for the first time realising in a dull vague kind of way that it might never more be with him as it had been in the vanished past. Possibly also, the memory of his savage spouse125 who had loved him many years would add some bitterness to his strange isolated life. For, far away in their old home, she would still wait for him, vainly hoping, fearing much, dim-eyed with sorrow and long watching, yet never seeing his form returning to her out of the mysterious haze126 of the desert!
Poor Damian, and poor wife!
1 dribbling | |
n.(燃料或油从系统内)漏泄v.流口水( dribble的现在分词 );(使液体)滴下或作细流;运球,带球 | |
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2 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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3 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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4 foe | |
n.敌人,仇敌 | |
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5 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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6 plundering | |
掠夺,抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
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7 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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8 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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9 wreck | |
n.失事,遇难;沉船;vt.(船等)失事,遇难 | |
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10 colonists | |
n.殖民地开拓者,移民,殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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11 dense | |
a.密集的,稠密的,浓密的;密度大的 | |
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12 circuitous | |
adj.迂回的路的,迂曲的,绕行的 | |
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13 mustered | |
v.集合,召集,集结(尤指部队)( muster的过去式和过去分词 );(自他人处)搜集某事物;聚集;激发 | |
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14 attire | |
v.穿衣,装扮[同]array;n.衣着;盛装 | |
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15 dummy | |
n.假的东西;(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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16 improvised | |
a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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17 bolsters | |
n.长枕( bolster的名词复数 );垫子;衬垫;支持物v.支持( bolster的第三人称单数 );支撑;给予必要的支持;援助 | |
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18 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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19 hind | |
adj.后面的,后部的 | |
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20 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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21 amazement | |
n.惊奇,惊讶 | |
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22 invaders | |
入侵者,侵略者,侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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23 hoofs | |
n.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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24 beheld | |
v.看,注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 );瞧;看呀;(叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现)哎哟 | |
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25 foes | |
敌人,仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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26 frantic | |
adj.狂乱的,错乱的,激昂的 | |
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27 slain | |
杀死,宰杀,杀戮( slay的过去分词 ); (slay的过去分词) | |
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28 trampling | |
踩( trample的现在分词 ); 践踏; 无视; 侵犯 | |
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29 discretion | |
n.谨慎;随意处理 | |
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30 wretches | |
n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 );可怜的人;恶棍;坏蛋 | |
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31 muskets | |
n.火枪,(尤指)滑膛枪( musket的名词复数 ) | |
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32 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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33 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
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34 smothered | |
(使)窒息, (使)透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 ); 覆盖; 忍住; 抑制 | |
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35 apprised | |
v.告知,通知( apprise的过去式和过去分词 );评价 | |
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36 resolute | |
adj.坚决的,果敢的 | |
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37 conceal | |
v.隐藏,隐瞒,隐蔽 | |
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38 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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39 ribs | |
n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 );(船或屋顶等的)肋拱;肋骨状的东西;(织物的)凸条花纹 | |
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40 infamous | |
adj.声名狼藉的,臭名昭著的,邪恶的 | |
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41 scout | |
n.童子军,侦察员;v.侦察,搜索 | |
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42 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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43 propensities | |
n.倾向,习性( propensity的名词复数 ) | |
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44 winked | |
v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 );递眼色(表示友好或高兴等);(指光)闪烁;闪亮 | |
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45 wreak | |
v.发泄;报复 | |
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46 vengeance | |
n.报复,报仇,复仇 | |
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47 illiterate | |
adj.文盲的;无知的;n.文盲 | |
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48 gaucho | |
n. 牧人 | |
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49 faculties | |
n.能力( faculty的名词复数 );全体教职员;技巧;院 | |
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50 feats | |
功绩,伟业,技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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51 monotonous | |
adj.单调的,一成不变的,使人厌倦的 | |
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52 miraculous | |
adj.像奇迹一样的,不可思议的 | |
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53 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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54 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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55 jealousy | |
n.妒忌,嫉妒,猜忌 | |
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56 degenerate | |
v.退步,堕落;adj.退步的,堕落的;n.堕落者 | |
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57 prudent | |
adj.谨慎的,有远见的,精打细算的 | |
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58 gauchos | |
n.南美牧人( gaucho的名词复数 ) | |
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59 offenders | |
n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 );犯规者;罪犯;妨害…的人(或事物) | |
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60 ostriches | |
n.鸵鸟( ostrich的名词复数 );逃避现实的人,不愿正视现实者 | |
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61 ostrich | |
n.鸵鸟 | |
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62 grove | |
n.林子,小树林,园林 | |
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63 willows | |
n.柳树( willow的名词复数 );柳木 | |
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64 portend | |
v.预兆,预示;给…以警告 | |
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65 jeer | |
vi.嘲弄,揶揄;vt.奚落;n.嘲笑,讥评 | |
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66 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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67 subterranean | |
adj.地下的,地表下的 | |
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68 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
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69 importuned | |
v.纠缠,向(某人)不断要求( importune的过去式和过去分词 );(妓女)拉(客) | |
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70 amorous | |
adj.多情的;有关爱情的 | |
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71 gambling | |
n.赌博;投机 | |
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72 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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73 middle-aged | |
adj.中年的 | |
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74 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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75 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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76 margin | |
n.页边空白;差额;余地,余裕;边,边缘 | |
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77 compassion | |
n.同情,怜悯 | |
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78 Christians | |
n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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79 hoarsely | |
adv.嘶哑地 | |
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80 eloquent | |
adj.雄辩的,口才流利的;明白显示出的 | |
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81 oratorical | |
adj.演说的,雄辩的 | |
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82 exertion | |
n.尽力,努力 | |
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83 binding | |
有约束力的,有效的,应遵守的 | |
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84 intrigues | |
n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 );神秘气氛;引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 );激起…的好奇心 | |
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85 discredit | |
vt.使不可置信;n.丧失信义;不信,怀疑 | |
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86 orphan | |
n.孤儿;adj.无父母的 | |
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87 vow | |
n.誓(言),誓约;v.起誓,立誓 | |
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88 situated | |
adj.坐落在...的,处于某种境地的 | |
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89 courageous | |
adj.勇敢的,有胆量的 | |
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90 chili | |
n.辣椒 | |
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91 implements | |
n.工具( implement的名词复数 );家具;手段;[法律]履行(契约等)v.实现( implement的第三人称单数 );执行;贯彻;使生效 | |
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92 missionaries | |
n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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93 favourable | |
adj.赞成的,称赞的,有利的,良好的,顺利的 | |
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94 fermented | |
v.(使)发酵( ferment的过去式和过去分词 );(使)激动;骚动;骚扰 | |
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95 professed | |
公开声称的,伪称的,已立誓信教的 | |
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96 enchantment | |
n.迷惑,妖术,魅力 | |
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97 exultation | |
n.狂喜,得意 | |
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98 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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99 countenance | |
n.脸色,面容;面部表情;vt.支持,赞同 | |
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100 sleet | |
n.雨雪;v.下雨雪,下冰雹 | |
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101 stony | |
adj.石头的,多石头的,冷酷的,无情的 | |
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102 slaughter | |
n.屠杀,屠宰;vt.屠杀,宰杀 | |
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103 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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104 delicacy | |
n.精致,细微,微妙,精良;美味,佳肴 | |
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105 artery | |
n.干线,要道;动脉 | |
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106 spouting | |
n.水落管系统v.(指液体)喷出( spout的现在分词 );滔滔不绝地讲;喋喋不休地说;喷水 | |
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107 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
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108 abhorred | |
v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 );(厌恶地)回避;拒绝;淘汰 | |
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109 brute | |
n.野兽,兽性 | |
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110 bouts | |
n.拳击(或摔跤)比赛( bout的名词复数 );一段(工作);(尤指坏事的)一通;(疾病的)发作 | |
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111 gathering | |
n.集会,聚会,聚集 | |
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112 warriors | |
武士,勇士,战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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113 intoxication | |
n.wild excitement;drunkenness;poisoning | |
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114 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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115 boisterous | |
adj.喧闹的,欢闹的 | |
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116 truculent | |
adj.野蛮的,粗野的 | |
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117 butt | |
n.笑柄;烟蒂;枪托;臀部;v.用头撞或顶 | |
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118 bestowed | |
赠给,授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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119 industrious | |
adj.勤劳的,刻苦的,奋发的 | |
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120 barbarians | |
n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 );外国人;粗野的人;无教养的人 | |
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121 waning | |
adj.(月亮)渐亏的,逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 );(月)亏;变小;变暗淡 | |
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122 banish | |
vt.放逐,驱逐;消除,排除 | |
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123 gnawing | |
a.痛苦的,折磨人的 | |
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124 groves | |
树丛,小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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125 spouse | |
n.配偶(指夫或妻) | |
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126 haze | |
n.霾,烟雾;懵懂,迷糊;vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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