Apostolos is little more than six leagues to the west of Conceiçao, upon the road which leads towards Itu; and twenty miles further in the same direction upon this road St. Carlos is situated.
St. Francisco Xavier is a few leagues to the north of St. Maria, and to the east of Candellaria. In this interval Martyres is situated.
Itapuan is on the right bank of the Paranna, to the north of Candellaria. Trinidade is eight leagues to the north of Itapuan. St. Ignaçio Guassu (the larger) is near the head of a branch of the river Tibiquary. It is the most ancient of the whole.
St. Fé is five leagues to the north-east of St. Ignaçio Guassu. The mission of Jesus is four leagues to the north-north-west of Trinidad.
St. Roza is six leagues to the east of St. Ignaçio Guassu; St. Gosme four leagues to the south-east of St. Roza.
St. Tiago is eight leagues to the north of Itu; and Yapegu, which is the most southern, and amongst the largest of the missions, is situated near the Uruguay, a little below the confluence of the Ibicui, and half a league to the north of the river Guavirida. The Jesuits had a college here richly ornamented.
CHAP. VII.
PROVINCE OF URUGUAY.
Foundation of Aldeias, called Missions, by the Spanish Jesuits for the Tappe Indians—Flourish till the Expulsion of that Sect—Subsequent Decay—War between the Spaniards and Portuguese—Conquest of the Seven Missions by the latter Power in 1801—Governor sent—Boundaries—Mountains—Rivers—Phytology—Zoology—Names and Population of the Seven Missions at their Conquest.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spanish Jesuits entered the territory to the east of the river Uruguay, and there founded seven large villages, called reduçōes, for the habitation of various hordes of Tappes, the possessors of the country, in order the better to civilize and bring them to Christianity, by the same means as were practised with those of the Paranna. It has been already stated, that, in the treaty of limits of 1750, the exchange of these missions for Colonia do Sacramento was agreed upon by their Faithful and Catholic Majesties; and also, that the Jesuits frustrated its execution in the first instance, and that, on the sudden return to Rio de Janeiro, of Gomes Freyre d’Andrade, in 1756, things soon reverted to their anterior state.
These reduçōes, which made a part of the spiritual Jesuitical kingdom, flourished to the period of the expulsion of their founders, when they began to decay, and thirty-four years of deterioration, by imperceptible degrees, could not have transformed the whole more effectually; in which state they were, in effect, at the beginning of the present century, when the declaration of war between the two crowns in Europe, caused the arming of the inhabitants of the capitania of Rio Grande de St. Pedro, who, since the peace of 1777, had lived in tranquillity.