The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [867]
At these words, our veteran was silent; and as he returned his pipe, with a piteous grimace, Ernest burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“Very well! my dear nephew, this is the true moral I wished you to draw from my story. I hope you no longer feel an inclination to kill yourself.”
E. P.
THE HEAD OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
Translated from the French for the New Mirror.
ON the route from Barcelona to Valencia is a defile, known by the name of Col de Balaguer. Running between the sea and a chain of hills, the road is everywhere commanded by steep rocks: at one place, where it forms an elbow, enormous stones detached from the rocks, and large crevices, serve as nooks of concealment of malefactors. This place is famous for the number of its assassinations, and six crosses, erected at short distances from each other; announce to the traveller that Christians here met death without having received the holy viaticum, and have not been buried in consecrated ground.
All these murders were attended by the same circumstances, remarkable for their singularity. The first victim who perished in this dreadful defile, was a rich merchant. In the month of March 1828, he was going from Lerida to Tortosa. Some business forced him to leave the direct route. He travelled alone, on his mule: a mendicant friar found him in the morning, lying by the road-side, bathed in blood. A shot had struck him in the forehead, just between his eyes. His money and jewels had been taken, but the assassin had disdained his other effects; his mule was quietly grazing at a little distance., and his valise had not been carried off. With astonishment it was observed that a wooden cross, rudely fashioned, was placed in the hands of the dead man. Officers of justice were sent to the place, but could discover no marks by which to trace out the criminal. Five similar murders were successively committed in the same place; the victims were all struck with the same precision, a single blow, which killed instantaneously. Every one was found with a wooden cross near them.
All these crimes took place at periods not far distant from each other. The eve of the feast of St. Hilaire, of the same year, (October 23d, 1828,) Don Sebastian Aravedra, who had been to Barcelona, to sell wool from Segovia, was assassinated as he was returning to Murcia, to overlook the culture of his olive-trees.
On Low-Sunday, of 1829, Don Juan Andras Escoriasa, having delivered a cargo of muskets at Tarrangona, was going to Tortosa for his trading, when he was killed in the same place.
The 24th of February, 1830, Zoannofer, a pedler, who had been travelling over Navarre and a part of Catalonia, was going to take a boat at Tortosa, to go up the Ebro, when he was murdered in the same manner.
Eight days before the Feast of the Dead, of the same year, Don Antonio Pasquita Dirba, hunter and smuggler, who had been engaged the same morning in facilitating the fraudulent introduction of a cargo of French tobacco, in the environs of Balaguer, was found assassinated in this place, with a loaded musket on his shoulder.
The 14th of January, 1831, Nervasy Alaves was going to Tortosa to deliver a quantity of extract of licorice at Catalonia. He was the last of the unfortunate travellers who were killed in this defile.
These rocks form this time became so famous, they were dreaded not only by travellers, but also by all the inhabitants in their vicinity. Some herdsmen related that in driving their goats on that side, they had found faded flowers on the graves of these strangers, placed there by an unknown hand; they asserted they had seen at evening a tall shadow prostrating itself before the cross, but every time they approached it, it vanished instantly. They said, also, they had heard sad groans at the foot of the hill. At length