466 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
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 
Hved 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. 
cit. p. 175). 
