The Puma^ or Lion of America 57 
Centenera, affirms that of two thousand persons in 
the town eighteen hundred perished of hunger. 
During this unhappy time, beasts of prey in large 
numbers were attracted to the settlement by the 
effluvium of the corpses, buried just outside the 
pallisades ; and this made the condition of the 
survivors more miserable still, since they could 
venture into the neighbouring woods only at the 
risk of a violent death. Nevertheless, many did. so 
venture, and among these was the young woman 
Maldonada, who, losing herself in the forest, strayed 
to a distance, and was eventually found by a party 
of Indians, and carried by them to their village. 
Some months later. Captain Euiz discovered 
her whereabouts, and persuaded the savages to 
bring her to the settlement ; then, accusing her of 
having gone to the Indian village in order to betray 
the colony, he condemned her to be devoured by 
wild beasts. She was taken to a wood at a dis- 
tance of a league from the town, and left there, tied 
to a tree, for the space of two nights and a day. 
A party of soldiers then went to the spot, expecting 
to find her bones picked clean by the beasts, but 
were greatly astonished to find Maldonada still 
alive, without hurt or scratch. She told them that 
a puma had come to her aid, and had kept at her 
side, defending her life against all the other beasts 
that approached her. She was instantly released, 
and taken back to the town, her deliverance through 
the action of the puma probably being looked on as 
a direct interposition of Provddence to save her. 
Rui Diaz concludes with the following paragraph, 
in which he afflrms that he knew the woman Mai- 
