[35] Thus it will be seen that the Franciscans were at work in the country long before the arrival of the Jesuits. It may be on this account that they became such bitter enemies of the later comers.
[36] ‘Comentarios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’. Published by Don Andres Gonzalez Barcia in his collection of ‘Early Historians of the Indies’ (Madrid, 1749).
[37] It must be allowed, however, that in their writings few of the Spanish conquistadores of America bragged much. They mostly gave the credit of all their doings to the God of Battles. The boasting has been reserved for the conquerors of Africa in our own time.
[38] Asiento is a contract. The contract which Charles V., at the well-meant but unfortunate instigation of Las Casas, made with the Genoese to supply negroes for America is known as ‘El Asiento de los Negros’.
[39] In the capitulacion made by Alvar Nuñez with the King occurs the celebrated clause, ‘Que no pasasen procuradores ni abogados a las Indias’, i.e., that neither solicitors nor barristers should go to the Indies. It is unfortunate it was not held to stringently, as in Paraguay, at least, the Reptilia were already well represented.
[40] This is perhaps the first account of the levying of the tithe in the New World.
[41] These backwaters are known in Guaraní by the name of aguapey.
[42] The vinchuca is a kind of flying bug common in Paraguay. Its shape is triangular, its colour gray, and its odour noxious. It is one of the Hemiptera, and its so-called scientific appellation is onorhinus gigas.
[43] R. B. Cunninghame Graham writes elsewhere: “All over South America the jaguar is called a tiger (tigre).”—A. L., 1998.
[44] Azara, in his ‘Historia del Paraguay’, etc., tells us that in 1551 Domingo de Irala at Asuncion bought a fine black horse for five thousand gold crowns. He bound himself to pay for him out of the proceeds of his first conquest.