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three Frenchmen (one who claimed to be a doctor) pleaded to go along, she
agreed, and by the time they eventually left, the group consisted of herself,
a twelve-year-old nephew, two brothers, four servants, the three French-
men, and a cadre of Indian guides. The walk through the rain and mud to
the fi rst river settlement was far more diffi cult than expected, and when
at last they arrived exhausted at Canelos, they found it had been burned
to the ground by the local people, who believed the recent smallpox epi-
demic that had ravaged the site was a curse by evil spirits. Unsettled by this
news, the Indian guides deserted during the night. None of the rest had any
experience with canoes, the rapid fl ow of the river made it impossible to go
back, and the next settlement was days away. During one attempt to reach
the next village one of the Frenchmen drowned, and during another the
canoe capsized and most of the food was lost. Another of the Frenchmen
suggested that he and Joachim, the only male servant, take the boat to the
village and return later for the others. Without other alternatives, it was
agreed, and they departed, leaving Isabela, four women servants, Isabela's
two brothers, the third Frenchman (who remained as a kind of hostage),
and the boy, who was now ill with fever. After a month of waiting under
miserable conditions of unrelenting rain, insects, infection, and near starva-
tion, the situation deteriorated entirely. The Frenchman, awaking to a vam-
pire bat feeding on his foot, went mad. Isabela decided they had to leave,
and another canoe was built; but it too was wrecked and the few remain-
ing provisions lost. The boy, her two brothers, one maidservant died, and
another walked into the jungle in a delirium and never returned. They all
prepared for death. But then Isabela, envisioning Godin still waiting for her
in French Guiana “cut off the shoes of her dead brothers, fashioned these
into crude sandals, picked up a machete . . . and stumbled into the jungle”
(Von Hagen 1945, 78).
She often heard imaginary voices in the days ahead, but one turned out
to be real—the servant Joachim, returning with a canoe and supplies. They
never made contact. He saw the camp strewn with the remains of dead bod-
ies and assumed she must have perished. The rumor of her death reached
Godin in Cayenne, and even circulated later in magazines and in the sa-
lons of Paris. But Isabela did not die. After nine days of wandering alone,
she came upon three Indians sitting on the bank of the river. By this time
she was completely white-haired, naked, and frighteningly gaunt, but she
managed to address them in fl uent Quechua, asked to go to Andoas, and
then collapsed. They took her to the mission at Andoas, arriving in early
January 1770.
Even then her ordeal was not over because when she gave the Indi-
