TRAVELS OP THE MISSIONARIES, 



431 



tri£l of Cumbasa, with father Sobrevlela, ten of his Indian parishioners insisted on 

 accompanying him, binding themselves by the most solemn promises to brave 

 with him the utmost perils*. In despite, however, of this fidelity and attach- 

 ment, father Girbal was aware, that to venture himself with them by the Ucayali, 

 would be to expose himself to a manifest danger. They were already fatigued by 

 the service they had performed ; the climate was not congenial to them ; and they 

 had not the least knowledge of the new route that was to be followed. For these 

 reasons he obhged them to return to their own country, thus depriving himself 

 of the consolation of reckoning, in the prosecution of his labours, and until they 

 should be brought to a conclusion, on a few faithful and compassionate friends. In 

 their stead, fourteen stout Indians, belonging to the Omaguas tribe, all of them 

 skilful navigators, were engaged ; and with these Indians, in two canoes, he 

 ploughed the Maranon on the 12th, in quest of the mouth of the Ucayah. They 

 did not reach it until the evening of the 13th ; and at that station they passed the 

 night in the canoes. 



The dawn of the morning of the 14th of September had begun to illumine the 

 extensive and dreary forests through which flows the ancient and opulent Paro, 

 when the sight of this immense solitude brought to the recoUeftion of father Girbal 

 the tragical scene of fourteen brethren put to death by the very barbarians in search 

 of whom he had undertaken his peregrination. Oppressed by this melancholy idea, 

 and by the refle£lion of the little fruit that had been derived from the spilling of so 

 much innocent blood, he direfted his clamours to Heaven from the inmost recesses 

 of his heart,, " not that he should be freed from the fatigues, hunger, thirst, and 

 other sufferings which might supervene, and terminate in his death ; but that his 

 soul might be penetrated by a ray of that divine light which was solely capable of 

 exciting and kindling in his breast the charity necessary to instruft, reduce, and 

 convert this portion of infidels, surrounded by the thick gloom of paganism." 

 Relying on the proteftion of the Supreme Being, whom he implored with the 

 humble and fervent supplications which have been cited, he began to struggle 

 against the currents of the above-mentioned river. In proportion as he overcame 

 them, and penetrated by its great windings, he admired the spacious banks, which 



* The noble firmness of tliese Indians may be collected from their behaviour in the town of Gran Co- 

 cama. Being strongly impressed with a persuasion that they were about to perish by the hands of the 

 savages, they prepared themselves for death with a truly christian resignation. Each of them made his 

 wiU, and turned his face, in imploring forgiveness of his Maker, towards the horizon which bounded 

 his native country, without displaying the least change of countenance. 



afford 



