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
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,
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