4 66 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



there arrived at my village a very good-looking 

 Indian of about sixty, inquiring for the nation of the 

 Pevas and speaking their language, and yet not 

 known to anybody there. After a while he came to 

 me and besought me to hear in secret the motive of 

 his coming thither. Having taken him apart, where 

 we could be overheard of no one, he prostrated 

 himself at my feet, and earnestly entreated me to 

 receive him into my village and make him anew a 

 Christian. I asked him if, being baptized, he had 

 denied the Christian faith. He said no, but that, 

 although he was already a Christian, he had always 

 lived like a heathen." The Indian then tells his 

 story in full to the priest ; how he was a Peva by 

 birth, and had been baptized at the mission when 

 young ; but that, as he grew up, having taken a 

 great dislike to the severe discipline of the mission, 

 he had fled from it down the Amazon, and finally 

 established himself in a village on the river Teffe. 

 There he was recommended by an Indian to enter 

 on the office of one lately deceased who used every 

 year to visit the women without husbands. Having 

 followed this employ for thirty years, and received 

 from the women many presents of gold and green 

 stones, he was obliged to relinquish it on account of 

 an injury he received, and also (as he asserted) by a 

 remorseful conscience which continually tormented 

 him. "The death of this Indian," adds the good 

 missionary, "a few months afterwards, having lived 

 during that period a penitent and holy life, was one 

 of the greatest consolations that befell me in the 

 missions, for I felt convinced, from his good 

 conduct, that he was predestinated " (Velasco, loc. 

 ciL p. 175). 



