The event happened in favor of Saint Teresa of Avila and her nuns who were travelling to found, once again, a monastery of Carmelite nuns. Marcelle Auclair tells us the story in “Saint Teresa of Avila”

....Avila, Espagne..Avila, Spain.... — Avila, Spain

The seven convents of Carmelite nuns previously founded by Teresa of Jesus were “in her neighbourhood”, twenty or thirty miles around Avila: in this cold month of February 1575, she ventured towards Beas, at the borders of Castile and Andalusia, in the province of Jaen. Frightened by the perspective of a long and difficult journey through the mountains, she was nonetheless convinced by the obstinate devotion of the donors, the two noble Godinez sisters, and by the lure of a climate particularly sweet and delicious.

For days the rickety jolting carts jerked their way across the sierra. There was no end to the zigzags, steep ascents and abrupt falls. The mules went more and more slowly, less and less surely, and the drivers themselves seemed to have no lungs left as they shouted their Ar-e-e-e-e! to spur on their beasts.

St. Teresa of Jesus, through a chink in the wooden planks which closed in her cart, saw a certain anxiety in the looks of the muleteers who were hesitating; a moment later they tackled a steep slope which might have been all right for goats, but was in no way intended for their wide, heavy carts. She scented danger. "Those men no longer know where they’re going. Let us betake ourselves to prayer, Sisters, let us ask Our Lord and our father St Joseph to guide us!"

Then a voice rose from far away, from the very bottom of the ravine, the voice of an old Shepherd who was used to making himself heard at an immense distance: "Sto-o-p! sto-o-p! You will overturn and roll down the precipice if you go down that w-a-a-y!"

The panic of men and beasts lasted a few seconds, followed immediately by a great hubbub of questions, affirmations and exclamations: they were well and truly lost in the Sierra Morena! Actually, they were slipping down into an abyss! The voice coming up from the depths of the chasm had saved them. But how were they to get out of their present situation? How were they to turn round on the narrow path between the rock and the chasm? How were they to find the right road again? With hand over mouth, trumpet wise, they shouted to the bottom of the precipice: “Where can we pa-a-a-ss?”

And the bottom of the precipice answered:“Go gently backwards, there’s no danger in that. If you go back a hundred turns of the wheel, you will find the right track ag-a-a-i-i-n!”

The voice hovered in the silence and its echo gave it back as a very clear mirror gives back a reflection. A servant who went to reconnoiter the path came back declaring that the right track was indeed at the point indicated: it was concealed by a boulder which could be moved without great difficulty. While some of the men in the escort set to work to clear away the boulder the others tried to find their invisible rescuer. They shouted as loud as they could, peered into the depths of the chasm, one of them even tried to climb down it: all to no purpose. “Where was this shepherd hiding?”

“I don't like letting them go on looking,” she said to her daughters: “they will find nobody. But we can’t tell them that the voice we heard is our father St Joseph's answer to our prayers.”

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Excerpts of Saint Teresa of Avila by Marcelle Auclair. Published by Pantheon, 1953, pages 266-268.

An eloquent testimony