Wandering along the by-paths of the forests which fringe the mission towns, and set them, so to speak, in the hard tropical enamel of green foliage, on which time has no lien, and but the arts of all-destroying man are able to deface, I may have chanced upon some petty detail which may serve to pass an hour away.
A treatise of a forgotten subject by a labourer unskilled, and who, moreover, by his very task challenges competition with those who have written on the theme, with better knowledge, and perhaps less sympathy; a pother about some few discredited and unremembered priests; details about half-savages, who ‘quoi! ne portaient pas des haults de chausses’; the recollections of long silent rides through forest paths, ablaze with flowers, and across which the tropic birds darted like atoms cut adrift from the apocalypse; a hotch-potch, salmagundi, olla podrida, or sea-pie of sweet and bitter, with perhaps the bitter ruling most, as is the way when we unpack our reminiscences—yes, gentle and indulgent reader, that’s the humour of it.
R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
Gartmore,
March 30, 1900.
Contents
[Chapter I]
Early history—State of the country—Indian races—Characteristics of the different tribes—Dobrizhoffer’s book—Various expeditions—Sebastian Cabot—Don Pedro de Mendoza—Alvar Nuñez—His expedition and its results—Other leaders and preachers—Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus
[Chapter II]
Early days of the missions—New settlements founded—Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists—Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos—Father Maceta—Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya—His work and influence—Retreat of the Jesuits down the Paraná
[Chapter III]
Spain and Portugal in South America—Enmity between Brazilians and Argentines—Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay—Struggles with the natives—Father Mendoza killed—Death of Father Montoya
[Chapter IV]
Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay—His labours as apostolic missionary—His ambitions and cunning—Pretensions to saintliness—His attempts to acquire supreme power—Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor