MATERNAL AFFECTION. 
409 
which are prohibited alike by religion and the Spanish laws. They 
found in an Indian hut a Guahiba mother, with three children, two 
of whoin were still infants. They were occupied in preparing the 
flour of cassava. Resistance was impossible ; the father was gone to 
fish, and the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely 
had she reached the savanna, when she was seized by the Indians 
of the mission, who go to hunt men, as the whites hunt the negroes 
in Africa. The mother and her children were bound, and dragged 
to the bank of the river. The monk, seated in his boat, waited the 
issue of an expedition, of which he partook not the danger. Had 
the mother made too violent a resistance, the Indians would have 
killed her, for every thing is permitted when they go to the conquest 
of souls, {d III conquisia espiritual), and it is children in particular they 
seek to capture, in order to treat them in the mission as poitos, or 
slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were carried to San Fernando, 
in the hope that the mother would be unable to find her way back to 
her home by land. Far from those children who had accompanied 
their father on the day in which she had been carried off, this unhappy 
woman shewed signs of the deepest despair. She attempted to take 
back to her family the children who had been snatched away by the 
missionary, and fled wdth them repeatedly from the village of San 
Fernando: but the Indians never failed to seize her anew ; and the 
missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly beaten, took the 
cruel resolution of separating the mother from the two children who 
had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone toward the 
missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly bound, 
she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate that 
awaited her; but she judged, by the direction of the sun, that she 
was removing farther and farther from her hut and her native country. 
She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, 
and swam to the left bank of tbe Atabapo. The current carried her 
to a shelf or rock, which bears her name to this day. She landed, 
and took shelter in the woods, but the president of the missions ordered 
the Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahiba. 
In the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la 
Piedra de la Madre,') a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with 
those straps of manatee leather, which serve for whips in that country, 
and with which the alcades are always furnished. This unhappy 
woman, her hands tied behind her back w ith strong stalks of mamcure, 
was then dragged to the mission of Javita. 
She was throwm into one of the caravanseras that are called Cassa 
del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. 
Forests, till then believed to be impenetrable, separated the mission 
of Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues 
distant in a straight line. No other path is knowm than that of the 
rivers ; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to 
another, w'ere they only a few leagues apart. But such difficulties 
do not stop a mother who is separated from her children. The 
Guahiba was carelessly guarded in the caravansera ; her arms being 
wounded, the Indians of Javita had loosened her bonds, unknown to 
the missionary and the alcades : she succeeded, by the help of her 
