[62] The word in Brazil is used to designate a half-breed, but the etymology seems unknown.
[63] ‘Me he de salvar a pesar de Dios, porque para salvarse el hombre no ha menester mas que creer’ (Ruiz Montoya, ‘Conquista Espiritual’). Montoya adds with a touch of humour quite in Cervantes’ vein: ‘Este, sabe ya por experiencia la falsedad de su doctrina, porque le mataron de tres balazos, sin confesion.’
[64] The Mamelucos sometimes pushed their forays right through Paraguay into the district of the Moxos, and Padre Patricio Fernandez, in his curious ‘Relacion de los Indios Chiquitos’ (Madrid, 1726), relates their adventures in that far-distant district, and the conflicts which the Indians, led by their priests and helped by the Spanish settlers, sustained.
[65] Lahier (Francisci) S. I., ‘Annæ Paraguarie, Annor. 1635, et duor. sequ.’
[66] ‘Relazioni della Provincia del Paraguai’.
[68] An estero is a tract of country covered by water to the depth of two or three feet. The bottom is usually hard, but it is full of holes and hummocks. High pampa grass and reeds not infrequently obscure the view, and clouds of insects make life miserable. If the tract extends to more than a day’s journey, the night passed on a dry hummock, holding one’s horse and listening without a fire to the wild beasts, is likely to remain present to one in after-life, especially if alone; the only things that seem to link one to humanity are one’s horse and the familiar stars. Perhaps that is why Capella has always seemed to me in some sort my own property.
[69] This curious berry, about the size of a large damson, grows on a little shrub in sandy and rocky soils. It has a thick yellow rind and several large seeds, and the property of being icy cold in the hottest weather—a true traveller’s joy. Dr. de Bourgade de la Dardye, in his excellent book on Paraguay (the English edition published in London in 1892), thinks it is either a eugenia or a myrtus.