ANECDOTE OF AN INDIAN WOMAN. 221 



the former river attracted tlieir attention. It is called the CHAP.xvm 

 Piedra de la Gualiiba or Picdra de la Madrc, and com- xiie rT 

 memorates one of those acts of oppression of which Guaviaro. 

 Europeans are guilty in all countries whenever they 

 come into contact with savages. The missionary of San 

 Fernando had led his people to the banks of the Rio 

 Guaviare on a hostile excursion. In an Indian hut they 

 found a Guahibo woman, with three children, occupied 

 in preparing cassava-flour. She and her little ones 

 attempted to escape, but were seized and carried away. 

 The unhappy female repeatedly fled Avith her children ouahibo 

 from the village, but was always traced by her Christian woman, 

 countrymen. ^ At length the friar, after causing her to 

 be severely beaten, resolved to separate her from her 

 family, and sent her up the Atabapo toward the missions 

 of the Rio Negro. Ignorant of the fate intended for 

 her, but judging by the direction of the sun that her 

 persecutors were carrying her far from her native coun- 

 try, she burst her fetters, leaped from the boat, and 

 swam to the left bank of the river. She landed on a 

 rock ; but the president of the establishment ordered 

 the Indians to row to the shore and lay hands on her. 

 She was brought back in the evening, stretched upon 

 the bai"e stone (the Piedra de la Madre), scourged with 

 straps of manatee leather, which are the ordinary whips 

 of the country, and then dragged to the mission of 

 Javita, her hands bound behind her back. It was the 

 rainy season, the night was excessively dark, forests 

 believed to be impenetrable stretched from that station 

 to San Fernando over an extent of 86 miles, and the 

 only communication between these places was by the 

 river ; yet the Guahibo mother, breaking her bonds, jiatenijU 

 and eluding the vigilance of her guards, escaped under ^flection. 

 night, and on the fourth morning was seen at the vil- 

 lage, hovering around the hut which contained her 

 children. On this journey she must have undergone 

 hai-dships from which the most robust man would have 

 shrunk ; was forced to live upon ants, to swim numerous 

 streams, and to make her way through thickets and 



