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CANELOS TO BAftOS 165
itself into the Atlantic Ocean an honour of which
he was robbed by his lieutenant, Orellana. He had
left Quito in December 1539 with 350 Spaniards
and 4000 Indians, and he returned with only So
Spaniards, having lost all the Indians either by
death or flight.
Two hundred and thirty years later, Madame
Godin des Odonais, wife of one of the fellow-
labourers of M. de la Condamine, wishing to join
her husband at Cayenne, chose the route of the
Amazon. Leaving Riobamba, a town of the
Andes of Quito, towards the end of the year
i 769, she arrived at Canelos without any accident.
There she found the village deserted on account
of an epidemic of smallpox. The Indians of the
Sierra, who had until then carried the effects of
Madame Godin, fearing the infection, immediately
retraced their steps. There then remained with
her only her two brothers and six persons of her
suite, all unaccustomed to navigation. Finding no
boat at
but not
Canelos, they constructed a kind of raft,
knowing how to manage it, on the second
day it was upset and they lost almost all their effects,
including the provisions. Attempting then to follow
on foot the course of the Bombonasa, they lost
themselves in the forest, and after having wandered
about for several days, they succumbed one by one
to hunger and fatigue, so that soon Madame Godin
alone remained alive. Moved more by the neces-
sity for separating herself from the sad spectacle
of her dead brothers than by the hope of saving
herself, she pursued her way in the forest, and
happily she was able to find some tinamou egms
and wild fruits, which sufficed for her sustenance.