Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/517

Rh the junction of the Ene and Percne, navigating the whole extent of the Paro and Ucayali, and ascending by the Maranon and Huallaga, to the river Moyobamba. Having landed on its banks, he proceeded by land to Caxamarca.

The details relative to the tragical end of father Biedma are as follows: being desirous, in the year 1687, to pay another visit to his Conivos, he embarked at the above-mentioned junction of the Ene and Perene, having in his company two priests, a lay friar and a lay brother, together with several converted Indians whom he had engaged in his service at Sonomoro. After a few days had been spent in the navigation of the Paro, the party fell into an ambush of Piros and Comavos Indians, who made a general discharge of arrows, by which they were all killed. This disastrous event was fatal to the projects of the provincials of the Order of the Twelve Apostles, and was the cause of the entire loss of the conversions of Jauxa; on this account, that father Biedma having taken with him nearly the whole of the persons he employed as his coadjutors at Sonomoro, the few who still remained there being seized with a violent panic, abandoned the converts. The latter, finding themselves without a pastor, returned to the mountains, and to paganism.

The conversions which have been just cited, remained in this abandoned state until the year 1713, when the venerable founder of Ocopa, obeying the impulsion of his ardent zeal, proceeded with hasty steps from frontier to frontier, and having reached that of Jauxa, took the necessary measures for their re-establishment. In the prosecution of this pious intention he was so successful, that, with the help of several zealous co-operators belonging to the provincial order, the most distinguished of whom were friar Fernando de San Joseph, a native of the mountains of Burgos, and friar Juan de la Marca, by birth a Frenchman, in the year 1730, four populous and flourishing towns, entitled Sonomoro, Chavini, Jesus Maria, and Catalipango, were to be reckoned. The last was destroyed in the year 1737, by a cacique named Torote, who, after having barbarously put to death a lay brother and several Indian converts, proceeded, in the course of the same year, to the town of Sonomoro, where he massacred, with equal cruelty, the venerable fathers, friar Manuel Baxo, friar Alonzo, belonging to the Order of the Holy Ghost, and friar Cristoval Pacheco. The governor, Don Benito Troncoso, was no sooner apprised of this tragical event, than he assembled all the troops he could collect in the valley of Jauxa, and penetrated with them, and a few