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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We Were Reduced To The
Same Abstinence; We Were Stung By The Same Mosquitos; But The
Certainty Of Reaching In A Few Weeks The Term Of Our Physical
Sufferings Kept Up Our Spirits.
The passage of the canoe through the Great Cataract obliged us to stop
two days at Maypures.
Father Bernardo Zea, missionary at the Raudales,
who had accompanied us to the Rio Negro, though ill, insisted on
conducting us with his Indians as far as Atures. One of these Indians,
Zerepe, the interpreter, who had been so unmercifully punished at the
beach of Pararuma, rivetted our attention by his appearance of deep
sorrow. We learned that his grief was caused by the loss of a young
girl to whom he was engaged, and that he had lost her in consequence
of false intelligence which had been spread respecting the direction
of our journey. Zerepe, who was a native of Maypures, had been brought
up in the woods by his parents, who were of the tribe of the Macos. He
had brought with him to the mission a girl of twelve years of age,
whom he intended to marry at our return from the Cataracts. The Indian
girl was little pleased with the life of the missions, and she was
told that the whites would go to the country of the Portuguese
(Brazil), and would take Zerepe with them. Disappointed in her hopes,
she seized a boat, and with another girl of her own age, crossed the
Great Cataract, and fled al monte.
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