The Freebooters by Gustave Aimard — Read

We will now return to the Jaguar, whom we left departing from the pulqueria, and proceeding at the head of his bold companions toward the fort of the Point. But, before going further, in order to make the reader understand the almost insurmountable difficulties which the Jaguar would meet with on the audacious expedition he was attempting, we ask leave to tell him the legend current about this fortress, a legend which has survived to this day, in all its quaint simplicity.

The European traveller who visits for the first time Texas, and all the coasts of Southern America generally, experiences a feeling of indefinable sorrow at the sight of these gloomy and sinister shores, which have witnessed so many accidents, and against which the dark waves of the Pacific break with mysterious murmurs. All, in fact, disposes to reverie in these poetic countries: the sky, which resembles a plate of red-hot iron; the lofty denuded cliffs, whose capricious outline looks as if it had been cut out by some artistic giant of past ages, and bearing at times on their proud crests the still imposing ruins of an old palace of the Incas, or a teocali, whose massive walls are lost in the clouds -- the ancient lurking places of those ferocious priests of the Sun, who made all tremble around them, and raised their bloody titles both afloat and ashore.