The island of Lanzarote used to be called Titeroigotra. When theSpaniards arrived its inhabitants differed from those on the other islandsby their superior culture. They built their houses with cut stones whilethe Guanches of Tenerife lived in caves like troglodytes. At that time a strange custom - repeated only in Tibet- prevailed. A woman had several husbands, who each took it in turn to exercise the rights ofthe head of the family. Each husband was known as such during a lunarmonth; then another took his place while he returned to being a servant inthe house. In the fifteenth century the island of Lanzarote consisted of two states separated by a wall; a kindof monument, which outlives national enmities, found also in Scotland, Peruand China.

At Javita we had the pleasure of meeting a cultured, reasonable monk. We had to stay in his house the four or five days it took to carry our canoe along the Pimichín portage. Delay allowed us to visit the region, as well as rid us of an irritation that had been annoying us for the last two days: an intense itching in the articulations of our fingers and the backs of our hands. The missionary said this came from aradores (literally, 'ploughers') encrusted under our skin. With the aid of a magnifying glass we saw only lines, or whitish parallel furrows, which show why it is called an arador. The monks called for a mulatta who knew how to deal with all the little insects that burrow into human skin, from niguas, nuches and coyas to the arador. She was the curandera, the local doctor. She promised to remove all the insects irritating us, one by one. She heated the tip of a little stick on the fire and dug it into the furrows in our skin. After a long examination she announced, with that pedantic gravity peculiar to colored people, that she had found an arador. I saw a little round bag that could have been the egg of the acaride. I should have been relieved when this clumsy mulatta poked out three or four more of these aradores. But as my skin was full of acarides I lost all patience with an operation that had already lasted until well into the night. The next day a Javita Indian cured us incredibly quickly. He brought a branch of a shrub called uzao, which had little shiny leathery leaves similar to the cassia. With its bark he prepared a cold bluish infusion that smelled of liquorice. When he beat it it became very frothy. Thanks to a washing with this uzao infusion the itching caused by the aradores disappeared. We were never able to find flowers or fruit of this uzao; the shrub seemed to belong to the leguminous family. We dreaded the pain caused by these aradores so much that we took various branches with us right up to San Carlos.

Such is the memory attached to this fatal rock called the Piedra de la Madre. If I have dawdled over this touching story of maternal love in an often vilified race, it is because I wanted to make public this story heard from monks to prove that even missions should obey laws.