346 
THE BOCK OF THE GUAHIBA. 
and the two large stars in the feet of the Centuar. I found 
the latitude of San Balthasar 3° 14' 23". Horary angles of 
the sun gave 70° 14' 21" for the longitude by the chrono- 
meter. The dip of the magnetic needle was 27 , 8° (cent, 
div.) We left the mission at a late hour in the morning, 
and continued to go up the Atabapo for five miles ; then, 
instead of following that river to its source in the east, 
where it bears the name of Atacavi, we entered the Bio 
Tend. Before we reached its confluence, a granitic eminence 
on the western bank, near the mouth of the Guasacavi, fixed 
our attention : it is called P iedra de la Cruahiba, (Bock of 
the Guahiba woman), or the Piedra de la Madre (Mother’s 
Bock.) We inquired the cause of so singular a denomina- 
tion. Bather Zea could not satisfy our curiosity ; but some 
weeks after, another missionary, one of the predecessors of 
that ecclesiastic, whom we found, settled at San Eernando as 
president of the missions, related to us an event which 
excited in our minds the most painful feelings. If, in these 
solitary scenes, man scarcely leaves behind him any trace of 
his existence, it is doubly humiliating for a European to see 
perpetuated by so imperishable a monument of nature as a 
rock, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our 
species, and the contrast between the virtue of a savage, and 
the barbarism of civilized man ! 
In 1797 the missionary of San Eernando had led his 
Indians to the banks of the Bio Guaviare, on one of those 
hostile incursions which are prohibited alike by religion 
and the Spanish laws. They found in an Indian hut a 
Guahiba women with her three children (two of whom were 
still infants), occupied in preparing the flour of cassava. 
Besistance was impossible ; the father was gone to fish, and 
the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely 
had she reached the savannah when she was seized by the 
Indians of the mission, who hunt human beings, like the 
Whites and the Negroes in Africa, The mother and her chil- 
dren 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 shared not the danger. Had the mother 
made too violent a resistance the Indians would have killed 
her, for everything is permitted for the sake of the conquest 
of souls (la conquista espirituel), and it is particularly 
