Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Superior Of The
Missions, When He Would Make The Lay-Brothers Mindful Of Their Duty,
Threatens Sometimes To Send
Them to Esmeralda; that is, say the monks,
to be condemned to the mosquitos; to be devoured by those buzzing
Flies (zancudos gritones) which God appears to have created for the
torment and chastisement of man.* (* "Estos mosquitos que llaman
zancudos gritones los parece cria la naturaleza para castigo y
tormento de los hombres." "Those mosquitos which are called buzzing
zancudos, Nature seems to have created for the especial punishment and
torture of man." Fray Pedro Simon.) These strange punishments have not
always been confined to the lay-brothers. There happened in 1788 one
of those monastic revolutions, of which it is difficult to form a
conception in Europe, according to the ideas that prevail of the
peaceful state of the Christian settlements in the New World. For a
long period the Franciscan monks settled in Guiana had been desirous
of forming a separate republic, and rendering themselves independent
of the college of Piritu at Nueva Barcelona. Discontented with the
election of Fray Gutierez de Aguilera, chosen by a general chapter,
and confirmed by the king in the important office of president of the
missions, five or six monks of the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and
the Rio Negro, assembled together at San Fernando de Atabapo; chose
hastily a new superior from their own body; and caused the old one,
who, unfortunately for himself, had come to visit those parts, to be
arrested.
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