Note 261 — Chapter X
Reading edition
A person calling himself Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, and professing to have been one of the sufferers, printed a pamphlet, which was deposited in the archives of Buenos Ayres. In it he relates the tale of his miseries in uncouth Spanish. He says that he beheld his fettered mother perish of thirst on the road to Lima, in presence of guards who turned a deaf ear to her cries for water. He saw his faithful wife die on board the ship, without being allowed length of chain enough to approach her. During an imprisonment of forty years at Ceuta the sentries never relaxed their cruelties until the ministry which came into power in Spain, after the military movement of 1820, set the few survivors at liberty.
It is now confidently asserted that the author of this pamphlet was an impostor. He came to Buenos Ayres in 1822, and the republican government granted him a house, and a pension for life of 30 dollars a month.