carried from the court, and justice took its awful course. Sentence of
death was pronounced on all the prisoners; but the woman was reprieved,
and afterwards transported. The two men were executed within forty-eight
hours after their conviction, on the Gallows Green. They made no public
confession of their guilt, and met their fate with sullen indifference.
The awful ceremony was for a moment interrupted by an incident which
afterwards furnished ample matter for wonder and speculation among the
superstitious populace. It was well known that the younger Hogan had
been long employed on the estate of a nobleman in the neighbourhood;
but having been concerned in the abduction of a young female, under
circumstances of peculiar atrocity, which for want of legal evidence
could not be brought home to him, he was dismissed; and, finding himself
an object of general execration, he had since been skulking about the
country, associating with housebreakers and other lawless and abandoned
characters. At the moment the hangman was adjusting the rope round his
neck, a shrill voice screamed from the midst of the crowd, "Barny Hogan!
do ye mind Grace Power, and the last words ever she spoke to ye?" There
was a general movement and confusion; no one could or would tell whence
the voice proceeded. The wretched man was seen to change countenance for
the first time, and raising himself on tiptoe, gazed wildly round upon
the multitude: but he said nothing; and in a few minutes he was no more.
The reader may wish to know what has become of Cathleen, our _heroine_,
in the true sense of the word. Her story, her sufferings, her
extraordinary fortitude, and pure simplicity of character, made her an
object of general curiosity and interest: a subscription was raised
for her, which soon amounted to a liberal sum; they were enabled to
procure Reilly's discharge from the army, and with a part of the money,
Cathleen, who, among her other perfections, was exceedingly pious after
the fashion of her creed and country, founded yearly masses for the soul
of the poor pedlar; and vowed herself to make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving
to St. Gobnate's well. Mr. L., the magistrate who had first examined
her in the little inn at Balgowna, made her a munificent present; and
anxious, perhaps, to offer yet farther amends for his former doubts of
her veracity, he invited Reilly, on very advantageous terms, to settle
on his estate, where he rented a neat cabin, and a _handsome_ plot of
potatoe ground. There Reilly and his Cathleen were living ten years ago,
with an increasing family, and in the enjoyment of much humble happiness;
and there, for aught I know to the contrary, they may be living at this
day.
THE INDIAN MOTHER.[27]
There is a comfort in the strength of love,
Making that pang endurable, which else
Would overset the brain--or break the heart.
_Wordsworth._
The monuments which human art has raised to human pride or power may
decay with that power, or survive to mock that pride; but sooner or
later they perish--their place knows them not. In the aspect of a
ruin, however imposing in itself, and however magnificent or dear the
associations connected with it, there is always something sad and
humiliating, reminding us how poor and how frail are the works of man,
how unstable his hopes, and how limited his capacity compared to his
aspirations! But when man has made to himself monuments of the works
of God; when the memory of human affections, human intellect, human
power, is blended with the immutable features of nature, they consecrate
each other, and both endure together to the end. In a state of high
civilization, man trusts to the record of brick and marble--the pyramid,
the column, the temple, the tomb:
"Then the bust
And altar rise--then sink again to dust."
In the earlier stages of society, the isolated rock--the mountain,
cloud-encircled--the river, rolling to its ocean-home--the very stars
themselves--were endued with sympathies, and constituted the first,
as they will be the last, witnesses and records of our human destinies
and feelings. The glories of the Parthenon shall fade into oblivion; but
while the heights of Thermopylae stand, and while a wave murmurs in the
gulph of Salamis, a voice shall cry aloud to the universe--"Freedom
and glory to those who can dare to die!--woe and everlasting infamy to
him who would enthral the unconquerable spirit!" The Coliseum with its
sanguinary trophies is crumbling to decay; but the islet of Nisida,
where Brutus parted with his Portia--the steep of Leucadia, still remain
fixed as the foundations of the earth; and lasting as the round world
itself shall be the memories that hover over them! As long as the waters
of the Hellespont flow between Sestos and Abydos, the fame of the love
that perished there shall never pass away. A traveller, pursuing his
weary way through the midst of an African desert--a barren, desolate,
and almost boundless solitude--found a gigantic sculptured head, shattered
and half-buried in the sand; and near it the fragment of a pedestal, on
which these words might be with pain deciphered: "_I am Ozymandias, King
of kings; look upon my works, ye mighty ones, and despair!_" Who was
Ozymandias?--where are now his works?--what bond of thought or feeling,
links his past with our present? The Arab, with his beasts of burthen,
tramples unheeding over these forlorn vestiges of human art and human
grandeur. In the wildest part of the New Continent, hidden amid the
depths of interminable forests, there stands a huge rock, hallowed by
a tradition so recent that the man is not yet grey-headed who was born
its contemporary; but that rock, and the tale which consecrates it, shall
carry down to future ages a deep lesson--a moral interest lasting as
itself--however the aspect of things and the conditions of people change
around it. Henceforth no man shall gaze on it with careless eye; but
each shall whisper to his own bosom--"What is stronger than love in a
mother's heart?--what more fearful than power wielded by ignorance?--or
what more lamentable than the abuse of a beneficent name to purposes of
selfish cruelty?"
Those vast regions which occupy the central part of South America,
stretching from Guinea to the foot of the Andes, overspread with
gigantic and primeval forests, and watered by mighty rivers--those
solitary wilds where man appears unessential in the scale of creation,
and the traces of his power are few and far between--have lately occupied
much of the attention of Europeans; partly from the extraordinary events
and unexpected revolutions which have convulsed the nations round them;
and partly from the researches of enterprising travellers who have
penetrated into their remotest districts. But till within the last
twenty years these wild regions have been unknown, except through the
means of the Spanish and Portuguese priests, settled as missionaries
along the banks of the Orinoco and the Paraguay. The men thus devoted to
utter banishment from all intercourse with civilized life, are generally
Franciscan or Capuchin friars, born in the Spanish Colonies. Their pious
duties are sometimes voluntary, and sometimes imposed by the superiors
of their order; in either case their destiny appears at first view
deplorable, and their self-sacrifice sublime; yet, when we recollect
that these poor monks generally exchanged the monotonous solitude of
the cloister for the magnificent loneliness of the boundless woods and
far-spreading savannahs, the sacrifice appears less terrible; even where
accompanied by suffering, privation, and occasionally by danger. When
these men combine with their religious zeal some degree of understanding
and enlightened benevolence, they have been enabled to enlarge the
sphere of knowledge and civilization, by exploring the productions and
geography of these unknown regions; and by collecting into villages and
humanizing the manners of the native tribes, who seem strangely to unite
the fiercest and most abhorred traits of savage life, with some of the
gentlest instincts of our common nature. But when it has happened that
these priests have been men of narrow minds and tyrannical tempers, they
have on some occasions fearfully abused the authority entrusted to them;
and being removed many thousand miles from the European settlements and
the restraint of the laws, the power they have exercised has been as far
beyond control as the calamities they have caused have been beyond all
remedy and all relief.
Unfortunately for those who were trusted to his charge, Father Gomez was
a missionary of this character. He was a Franciscan friar of the order
of Observance, and he dwelt in the village of San Fernando, near the
source of the Orinoco, whence his authority extended as president over
several missions in the neighbourhood of which San Fernando was the
capital. The temper of this man was naturally cruel and despotic; he was
wholly uneducated, and had no idea, no feeling, of the true spirit of
christian benevolence: in this respect, the savages whom he had been
sent to instruct and civilize were in reality less savage and less
ignorant than himself.
Among the passions and vices which Father Gomez had brought from his
cell in the convent of Angostara, to spread contamination and oppression
through his new domain, were pride and avarice; and both were interested
in increasing the number of his converts, or rather, of his slaves. In
spite of the wise and humane law of Charles the Third, prohibiting the
conversion of the Indian natives by force, Gomez, like others of his
brethren in the more distant missions, often accomplished his purpose by
direct violence. He was accustomed to go, with a party of his people,
and lie in wait near the hordes of unreclaimed Indians: when the men
were absent he would forcibly seize on the women and children, bind
them, and bring them off in triumph to his village. There, being
baptized and taught to make the sign of the cross, they were _called_
Christians, but in reality were slaves. In general, the women thus
detained pined away and died; but the children became accustomed to
their new mode of life, forgot their woods, and paid to their Christian
master a willing and blind obedience; thus in time they became the
oppressors of their own people.
Father Gomez called these incursions, _la conquista espiritual_--the
conquest of souls.
One day he set off on an expedition of this nature, attended by twelve
armed Indians; and after rowing some leagues up the river Guaviare,
which flows into the Orinoco, they perceived, through an opening in the
trees, and at a little distance from the shore, an Indian hut. It is
the custom of these people to live isolated in families; and so strong
is their passion for solitude, that when collected into villages they
frequently build themselves a little cabin at a distance from their
usual residence, and retire to it, at certain seasons, for days
together. The cabin of which I speak was one of these solitary
_villas_--if I may so apply the word. It was constructed with peculiar
neatness, thatched with palm leaves, and overshadowed with cocoa trees
and laurels; it stood alone in the wilderness, embowered in luxuriant
vegetation, and looked like the chosen abode of simple and quiet
happiness. Within this hut a young Indian woman (whom I shall call
Guahiba, from the name of her tribe) was busied in making cakes of the
cassava root, and preparing the family meal, against the return of her
husband, who was fishing at some distance up the river; her eldest
child, about five or six years old, assisted her; and from time to time,
while thus employed, the mother turned her eyes, beaming with fond
affection, upon the playful gambols of two little infants, who, being
just able to crawl alone, were rolling together on the ground, laughing
and crowing with all their might.
Their food being nearly prepared, the Indian woman looked towards the
river, impatient for the return of her husband. But her bright dark
eyes, swimming with eagerness and affectionate solicitude, became fixed
and glazed with terror when, instead of him she so fondly expected, she
beheld the attendants of Father Gomez, creeping stealthily along the
side of the thicket towards her cabin. Instantly aware of her danger
(for the nature and object of these incursions were the dread of all the
country round) she uttered a piercing shriek, snatched up her infants
in her arms, and, calling on the other to follow, rushed from the hut
towards the forest. As she had considerably the start of her pursuers,
she would probably have escaped, and have hidden herself effectually in
its tangled depths, if her precious burthen had not impeded her flight;
but thus encumbered she was easily overtaken. Her eldest child, fleet
of foot and wily as the young jaguar, escaped to carry to the wretched
father the news of his bereavement, and neither father nor child were
ever more beheld in their former haunts.
Meantime, the Indians seized upon Guahiba--bound her, tied her two
children together, and dragged her down to the river, where Father Gomez
was sitting in his canoe, waiting the issue of the expedition. At the
sight of the captives his eyes sparkled with a cruel triumph; he thanked
his patron saint that three more souls were added to his community;
and then, heedless of the tears of the mother, and the cries of her
children, he commanded his followers to row back with all speed to San
Fernando.
There Guahiba and her infants were placed in a hut under the guard of
two Indians; some food was given to her, which she at first refused, but
afterwards, as if on reflection, accepted. A young Indian girl was then
sent to her--a captive convert of her own tribe, who had not yet quite
forgotten her native language. She tried to make Guahiba comprehend that
in this village she and her children must remain during the rest of
their lives, in order that they might go to heaven after they were dead.
Guahiba listened, but understood nothing of what was addressed to her;
nor could she be made to conceive for what purpose she was torn from her
husband and her home, nor why she was to dwell for the remainder of her
life among a strange people, and against her will. During that night she
remained tranquil, watching over her infants as they slumbered by her
side; but the moment the dawn appeared she took them in her arms and ran
off to the woods. She was immediately brought back; but no sooner were
the eyes of her keepers turned from her than she snatched up her children,
and again fled;--again--and again! At every new attempt she was punished
with more and more severity; she was kept from food, and at length
repeatedly and cruelly beaten. In vain!--apparently she did not even
understand why she was thus treated; and one instinctive idea alone,
the desire of escape, seemed to possess her mind and govern all her
movements. If her oppressors only turned from her, or looked another
way, for an instant, she invariably caught up her children and ran off
towards the forest. Father Gomez was at length wearied by what he termed
her "blind obstinacy;" and, as the only means of securing all three, he
took measures to separate the mother from her children, and resolved to
convey Guahiba to a distant mission, whence she should never find her
way back either to them or to her home.
In pursuance of this plan, poor Guahiba, with her hands tied behind her,
was placed in the bow of a canoe. Father Gomez seated himself at the
helm, and they rowed away.
The few travellers who have visited these regions agree in describing
a phenomenon, the cause of which is still a mystery to geologists,
and which imparts to the lonely depths of these unappropriated and
unviolated shades an effect intensely and indescribably mournful. The
granite rocks which border the river, and extend far into the contiguous
woods, assume strange, fantastic shapes; and are covered with a black
incrustation, or deposit, which contrasted with the snow-white foam of
the waves breaking on them below, and the pale lichens which spring from
their crevices and creep along their surface above, give these shores an
aspect perfectly funereal. Between these melancholy rocks--so high and
so steep that a landing-place seldom occurred for leagues together--the
canoe of Father Gomez slowly glided, though urged against the stream by
eight robust Indians.
The unhappy Guahiba sat at first perfectly unmoved, and apparently
amazed and stunned by her situation; she did not comprehend what they
were going to do with her; but after a while she looked up towards the
sun, then down upon the stream; and perceiving, by the direction of the
one and the course of the other, that every stroke of the oar carried
her farther and farther from her beloved and helpless children, her
husband, and her native home, her countenance was seen to change and
assume a fearful expression. As the possibility of escape, in her
present situation, had never once occurred to her captors, she had been
very slightly and carelessly bound. She watched her opportunity, burst
the withes on her arms, with a sudden effort flung herself overboard,
and dived under the waves; but in another moment she rose again at a
considerable distance, and swam to the shore. The current, being rapid
and strong, carried her down to the base of a dark granite rock which
projected into the stream; she climbed it with fearless agility, stood
for an instant on its summit, looking down upon her tyrants, then
plunged into the forest, and was lost to sight.
Father Gomez, beholding his victim thus unexpectedly escape him, sat
mute and thunderstruck for some moments, unable to give utterance to the
extremity of his rage and astonishment. When, at length, he found voice,
he commanded his Indians to pull with all their might to the shore; then
to pursue the poor fugitive, and bring her back to him, dead or alive.
Guahiba, meantime, while strength remained to break her way through
the tangled wilderness, continued her flight; but soon exhausted and
breathless, with the violence of her exertions, she was obliged to relax
in her efforts, and at length sunk down at the foot of a huge laurel
tree, where she concealed herself, as well as she might, among the
long, interwoven grass. There, crouching and trembling in her lair,
she heard the voices of her persecutors hallooing to each other through
the thicket. She would probably have escaped but for a large mastiff
which the Indians had with them, and which scented her out in her
hiding-place. The moment she heard the dreaded animal snuffing in the
air, and tearing his way through the grass, she knew she was lost. The
Indians came up. She attempted no vain resistance; but, with a sullen
passiveness, suffered herself to be seized and dragged to the shore.
When the merciless priest beheld her, he determined to inflict on her
such discipline as he thought would banish her children from her memory,
and cure her for ever of her passion for escaping. He ordered her to be
stretched upon that granite rock where she had landed from the canoe, on
the summit of which she had stood, as if exulting in her flight,--THE ROCK
OF THE MOTHER, as it has ever since been denominated--and there flogged
till she could scarcely move or speak. She was then bound more securely,
placed in the canoe, and carried to Javita, the seat of a mission far up
the river.
It was near sunset when they arrived at this village, and the inhabitants
were preparing to go to rest. Guahiba was deposited for the night in a
large barn-like building, which served as a place of worship, a public
magazine, and, occasionally, as a barrack. Father Gomez ordered two or
three Indians of Javita to keep guard over her alternately, relieving
each other through the night; and then went to repose himself after the
fatigues of his voyage. As the wretched captive neither resisted nor
complained, Father Gomez flattered himself that she was now reduced to
submission. Little could he fathom the bosom of this fond mother! He
mistook for stupor, or resignation, the calmness of a fixed resolve.
In absence, in bonds, and in torture, her heart throbbed with but one
feeling; one thought alone possessed her whole soul:--her children--her
children--and still her children!
Among the Indians appointed to watch her was a youth, about eighteen
or nineteen years of age, who, perceiving that her arms were miserably
bruised by the stripes she had received, and that she suffered the most
acute agony from the savage tightness with which the cords were drawn,
let fall an exclamation of pity in the language of her tribe. Quick she
seized the moment of feeling, and addressed him as one of her people.
"Guahibo," she said, in a whispered tone, "thou speakest my language,
and doubtless thou art my brother! Wilt thou see me perish without pity,
O son of my people? Ah, cut these bonds which enter into my flesh!
I faint with pain! I die!"
The young man heard, and, as if terrified, removed a few paces from her
and kept silence. Afterwards, when his companions were out of sight,
and he was left alone to watch, he approached, and said, "Guahiba!--our
fathers were the same, and I may not see thee die; but if I cut these
bonds, white man will flog me:--wilt thou be content if I loosen them,
and give thee ease?" And as he spoke, he stooped and loosened the thongs
on her wrists and arms; she smiled upon him languidly, and appeared
satisfied.
Night was now coming on. Guahiba dropped her head on her bosom, and
closed her eyes, as if exhausted by weariness. The young Indian, believing
that she slept, after some hesitation laid himself down on his mat. His
companions were already slumbering in the porch of the building, and all
was still.
Then Guahiba raised her head. It was night--dark night--without moon or
star. There was no sound, except the breathing of the sleepers around
her, and the humming of the mosquitoes. She listened for some time with
her whole soul; but all was silence. She then gnawed the loosened thongs
asunder with her teeth. Her hands once free, she released her feet; and
when the morning came she had disappeared. Search was made for her in
every direction, but in vain; and Father Gomez, baffled and wrathful,
returned to his village.
The distance between Javita and San Fernando, where Guahiba had left her
infants, is twenty-five leagues in a straight line. A fearful wilderness
of gigantic forest trees, and intermingling underwood, separated these
two missions;--a savage and awful solitude, which, probably, since
the beginning of the world, had never been trodden by human foot. All
communication was carried on by the river; and there lived not a man,
whether Indian or European, bold enough to have attempted the route
along the shore. It was the commencement of the rainy season. The sky,
obscured by clouds, seldom revealed the sun by day; and neither moon
nor gleam of twinkling star by night. The rivers had overflowed, and
the lowlands were inundated. There was no visible object to direct
the traveller; no shelter, no defence, no aid, no guide. Was it
Providence--was it the strong instinct of maternal love, which led
this courageous woman through the depths of the pathless woods--where
rivulets, swollen to torrents by the rains, intercepted her at every
step; where the thorny lianas, twining from tree to tree, opposed an
almost impenetrable barrier; where the mosquitoes hung in clouds upon
her path; where the jaguar and the alligator lurked to devour her; where
the rattle-snake and the water-serpent lay coiled up in the damp grass,
ready to spring at her; where she had no food to support her exhausted
frame, but a few berries, and the large black ants which build their
nests on the trees? How directed--how sustained--cannot be told: the
poor woman herself could not tell. All that can be known with any
certainty is, that the fourth rising sun beheld her at San Fernando; a
wild, and wasted, and fearful object; her feet swelled and bleeding--her
hands torn--her body covered with wounds, and emaciated with famine and
fatigue;--but once more near her children!