verge of starvation. The Governor Mendoza went off to seek help from the
other colonies up the river, deputing his authority to one Captain Ruiz,
who, according to all accounts, displayed an excessively tyrannous and
truculent disposition while in power. The people were finally reduced to
a ration of sis ounces of flour per day for each person; but as the
flour was putrid and only made them ill, they were forced to live on any
small animals they could capture, including snakes, frogs and toads.
Some horrible details are given by Rui Diaz, and other writers; one, Del
Barco Centenera, affirms that of two thousand persons in the town
eighteen hundred perished of hunger. During this unhappy time, beasts of
prey in large numbers were attracted to the settlement by the effluvium
of the corpses, buried just outside the pallisades; and this made the
condition of the survivors more miserable still, since they could
venture into the neighbouring woods only at the risk of a violent death.
Nevertheless, many did so venture, and among these was the young woman
Maldonada, who, losing herself in the forest, strayed to a distance, and
was eventually found by a party of Indians, and carried by them to their
village.

Some months later, Captain Ruiz discovered her whereabouts, and
persuaded the savages to bring her to the settlement; then, accusing her
of having gone to the Indian village in order to betray the colony, he
condemned her to be devoured by wild beasts. She was taken to a wood at
a distance of a league from the town, and left there, tied to a tree,
for the space of two nights and a day. A party of soldiers then went to
the spot, expecting to find her bones picked clean by the beasts, but
were greatly astonished to find Maldonada still alive, without hurt or
scratch. She told them that a puma had come to her aid, and had kept at
her side, defending her life against all the other beasts that
approached her. She was instantly released, and taken back to the town,