Andes. The biggest mountain range in the world stretches more than seven thousand miles across the South American continent. For eons, its mountains & valleys have been the home of native Indian tribes. Besides their large deposits of culture, belief, myth & legend the Andes hold great quantities of silver as was first discovered by the Spanish conquerors who came there sometime in the fifteen century A.D.

The greed of unprecedented treasure lead the Spanish to mine the
mountains with merciless exploit of the native manpower they had
succeeded to slave. Many lives were lost to the atrocities of the devilish
owners of the mines. Then one day, as abruptly as the Spanish had
appeared on the shores of their land, the silver from the mine disappeared. The Spanish abandoned their pursuit and the natives were saved from the life-taking slavery. Their prayers had been answered by mother Earth who had come to their rescue… goes the legend. For more than three hundred years the mine in the Andes of Ecuador has remained abandoned by man. Few locals or visitors ever step into it's deep to slay their curiosity.

A Spanish historian who lived for many years studying the lives of the Andes Indians, once ventured to explore the mine. As he went deep into one of its tunnels the historian came across a large room that was supposedly built to store mining tools and perhaps as also a control post. To his dismay he saw a heap of human skeletons piled to make a small mound of about twenty feet high & fifty feet in breadth. Atop it lay asleep a beast. When light from the Spanish historian's torch hit the closed eyes, they lurked open in alarm. At first they glinted silver & greedy. There was hunger in them. A hunger of many, many years it seemed. But as it sniffed the intruder from its stay, the eyes somehow mellowed.

The mountain lion lay still on its crown, and yet in it's grumble the Spanish felt he heard dejection. When the Indians of the village where the Spanish historian had stationed himself, learned of his story they said it was “Uncle”, the devilish owner whose spirit had returned after his death to haunt the mines. It still seeked the riches that made its eyes glint greedy & silver, they explained. And it let the Spaniard go because his blood belonged to his own kind. For none else who had gone into the mines returned. They were slain & their spirits held slaved. Sometimes, they hear faint noises of tools knocking at the rocks. They know it is the spirits of their own digging under command of Uncle's greed. The village priest says a day would come when Uncle's spirit would realize there is no silver hidden away in these mountains. That day, the devilish owner would come out of his dwell to dig out every place on Earth and claim every treasure it hides. 'Uncle want rich. Uncle want revenge. Uncle want rule Earth.'

©yogeshchandrate2008 All rights reserved

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