222 



ANECDOTE OF AN INDIAN WOMAN. 



all countries whenever they come into contact with 

 savages. In 1797, the missionary of San Fernando 

 had led his people to the banks of the Rio Gua- 

 viare on a hostile excursion. In an Indian hut they 

 found a Guahibo woman, with three children, occu- 

 pied in preparing cassava-flour. She and her little 

 ones attempted to escape, but were seized and carried 

 away. The unhappy female repeatedly fled with her 

 children from the village, but was always traced by 

 her Christian countrymen. At length the friar, after 

 causing her to be severely beaten, resolved to sepa- 

 rate her from her family, and sent her up the Atabipo 

 towards the missions of the Rio Negro. Ignorant 

 of the fate intended for her, but judging by the di- 

 rection of the sun that her persecutors w^ere carry- 

 ing her far from her native country, 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 bare 

 stone (thePiedra de la Madre), scourged with straps 

 of manatee leather, which are the ordinary whips of 

 the country, and then dragged to the mission of Ja- 

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

 rainy season, the night was excessively dark, forests 

 believed to be impenetrable stretched from that sta- 

 tion 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, and eluding the vigilance of her guards, 

 escaped under night, and on the fourth morning was 

 seen at the village, hovering around the hut which 

 contained her children. On this journey she must 

 have undergone hardships from which the most ro- 

 bust man would have shrunk ; was forced to live upon 

 ants, to swim numerous streams, and to make her 

 way through thickets and thorny lianas. And the 

 reward of all this courage and devotion was — her 



