I was preoccupied with such reflections all night. The next morning, at day-break, my hosts left me. The young warriors opened the march, and their wives closed it. The former were charged with the holy relics, the latter carried their infants. The old men walked slowly in the middle—placed between their forefathers and their posterity, between remembrance and hope, between the lost country and the country to be found.
O what tears are shed when we thus abandon our native land!—when, from the summit of the mountain of exile, we look for the last time upon the roof beneath which we were bred, and see the hut-stream still flowing sadly through the solitary fields surrounding our birth-place!
Unfortunate Indians!—you whom I have seen wandering in the deserts of the New World with the ashes of your ancestors;—you who gave me hospitality in spite of your misery—I could not now return your generosity, for I am wandering, like you, at the mercy of men; but less fortunate than you in my exile, I have not brought with me the bones of my fathers.
