[8] It is to be remembered that the Spanish colonists were as a rule antagonistic to the Jesuits, and that, therefore, Spanish writers do not of necessity hold a brief for the Jesuits in Paraguay. Moreover, the names of Esmid (Smith), Fildo (Fields), Dobrizhoffer, Cataldini and Tomas Bruno (Brown, who is mentioned as being natural de Yorca), Filge, Limp, Pifereti, Enis, and Asperger, the quaint medical writer on the virtues of plants found in the mission territory, show how many foreign Jesuits were actually to be found in the reductions of Paraguay. For more information on this matter see the ‘Coleccion de Documentos relativos á la Expulsion de los Jesuitas de la Republica Argentina y Paraguay’, published and collected by Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872.
[9] The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in his ‘Commentarios Reales’ (en Madrid 1723, en la oficina Real y á costa de Nicholas Rodriguez Franco, Impressor de libros, se hallaran en su casa en la calle de el Poço y en Palacio), derives the word from the Quichua Chacú = a surrounding. If he is right, it would then be equivalent to the Gaelic ‘tinchel’. Taylor, the Water-poet, has left a curious description of one of these tinchels. It was at a tinchel that the rising under the Earl of Mar in the ’15 was concocted.
[10] See the curious map contained in the now rare work of P. Pedro Lozano, entitled, ‘Descripcion Chorographica . . . del Gran Chaco, Gualamba’, etc. Also in the interesting collection of old maps published in 1872 at Madrid by Francisco Javier Brabo.
[11] It is, of course, to be taken into consideration that my two journeys in Paraguay were made after the great war which terminated in 1870, after lasting four years; but the writings of Demersay (‘Histoire du Paraguay et des Établissements des Jésuites’, Paris, 1862), those of Brabo, and of Azara, show the deserted state of the district of Misiones in the period from 1767, the date of the expulsion of the Jesuits, to the middle of the nineteenth century.
[13] See the reports of the Marques de Valdelirios and others in the publications of Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid, 1872, and in the ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil de Paraguay, Buenos-Ayres y Tucuman’, por Dr. Don Gregorio Funes, Buenos Ayres, 1816.
[14] Bernal Diaz, ‘Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva España’, vol. iv., cap. 207, Madrid, 1796.
[15] Especially noting down the appearance and qualities of ‘el caballo Motilla’, the horse of Gonzalo de Sandoval. Thus does he minutely describe Motilla, ‘the best horse in Castille or the Indies’. ‘El mejor caballo, y de mejor carrera, revuelto á una mano y à otra que decian que no se habia visto mejor en Castilla, ni en esa tierra era castaño acastañado, y una estrella en la frente, y un pie izquierdo calzado, que se decia el caballo Motilla; é quando hay ahora diferencia sobre buenos caballos, suclen decir es en bondad tan bueno como Motilla.’
[16] ‘La Argentina’, included in the ‘Coleccion de Angelis’, Buenos Ayres, 1836.
[17] ‘Historia y Descubrimiento de el Rio de la Plata y Paraguay’, Hulderico Schmidel, contained in the collection made by Andres Gonzalez Barcia, and published in 1769 at Madrid under the title of ‘Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales’.