EL ARAUSENSE.


Two years more than half a century ago there lived a Creole trader of
some wealth in the little town of Araure, in the province of Barinas,
upon the outskirts of the Llanos. Don José had a stalwart son, aged
about sixteen, whom he had trained to active usefulness amid the
monotonous ease of the torrid little municipality. Young Jose Antonio
had received, it is true, only a scanty education, but he could sign
his name, could verify a calculation, and had a shrewd, quick head for
business. The doctors-of-law, tolerably numerous even in little Araure,
pronounced him born for a jurist, and he was a godsend to the litigious
natives of the Captain-Generalcy. The hide-and-tallow merchants nodded
knowingly, as he passed them in the street with a good-humored _Àdios_,
and predicted great fortunes for the lad as a future man-of-business.
The Cura thought it a pity that he should prefer the society of the
dusky beauties of Araure to the more hallowed enjoyments of preparation
for a priestly life. And all the while quite other destinies were held
in store by Fate. The remissness of a mercantile correspondent of his
father altered the current of his life, and mightily influenced, even to
the present day, the fortunes of his country.

A sum was owing to Don José by a trader of Capudare, and he intrusted
his son with the task of collecting the debt. One fine day, in the
spring of 1807, the lad accordingly set out, in high spirits at his
important mission, armed with a brace of pistols and a cutlass, and
mounted on a trusty mule. The money was duly collected, but, as young
José Antonio journeyed home with it, a rumor of his precious charge was
spread, and he was beset in a lonely by-path by four highwaymen. The
pistols flashed from José's holsters, and one of the _churriones_ fell