Filled with wild jealousy at the sight and carried away by ungovernable
fury at their contempt of his authority and their daring disregard of his
feelings, he ordered them both to instant execution. Hurtado's old
sentence was renewed: he was bound to a tree and his body pierced with
arrows. As for Miranda, she was sentenced by the jealous and furious
savage to a more painful death, that of the flames. Yet painful as it was,
the loyal wife doubtless preferred it to yielding to the passion of the
chief, and as a quick means of rejoining in soul life her lover and
husband.
Thus ends the most romantic and tragical story of love and faith that the
early annals of America have to show, and the fate of the faithful Miranda
has become a classic in the love-lore of the America of the south.
LANTARO, THE BOY HERO OF THE ARAUCANIANS.
The river Biobio, in Southern Chili, was for centuries the boundary
between liberty and oppression in South America. South of it lay the land
of the Araucanians, that brave and warlike people who preserved their
independence against the whites, the only Indian nation in America of
which this can be said.
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