[152] Domingo Parodi, in his ‘Notas sobre algunas plantas usuales del Paraguay’ (Buenos Ayres, 1886), has done much good work.
[154] Prosopis dulcis. The famous ‘balm of the missions’, known by the vulgar name of curalo todo (all-heal), was made from the gum of the tree called aguacciba, one of the Terebinthaceæ. It was sold by the Jesuits in Europe. It was so highly esteemed that the inhabitants of the villages near to which the tree was found were specially enjoined to send a certain quantity of the balsam every year to the King’s pharmacy in Madrid.
[155] It was from those mountains that the Jesuits procured the seed of the Ilex Paraguayensis to plant in their reductions. The leaves beaten into a finish powder furnished the ‘Paraguayan tea’, called yerba-maté by the Spaniards and caa by the Indians, from which the Jesuits derived a handsome revenue. After the expulsion of the Order all the yerba in Paraguay was procured, till a few years ago, from forests in the north of Paraguay, in which the tree grew wild.
[156] It was by the Bull of Paul III.—given at the demand of two monks, Fray Domingo de Betanzos and Fray Domingo de Minaya—that the Indians were first considered as reasoning men (gente de razon), and not as unreasonable beings (gente sin razon), as Juan Ortiz, Bishop of Santa Marta, wished.
[157] Ibañez (‘Histoire du Paraguay sous les Jésuites M.D.CCIXXX.’), a great opponent of the Jesuits, says that European offenders and recalcitrant Indians in the missions were sent as a last resource to the Spanish settlements. This is not astonishing when we remember the curious letter of Don Pedro Faxardo, Bishop of Buenos Ayres (preserved by Charlevoix), written in 1721 to the King of Spain, in which he says he thinks ‘that not a mortal crime is committed in the missions in a year.’ He adds that, ‘if the Jesuits were so rich, why are their colleges so poor?’
[158] It is to be remembered that, of the thirty Jesuit missions, only eight were in Paraguay; the rest were in what to-day is Brazil and the Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, and Misiones.
[159] Sometimes, when they had been assembled, they all deserted suddenly, as did the Tobatines, who in 1740 suddenly left the reduction of Santa Fé, and for eleven years were lost in the forests, till Father Yegros found them, and, as they would not return, established himself amongst them (Cretineau Joly, ‘Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus’, vol. v., cap. ii.).
[160] P. Cardiel, ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 282: ‘Todos los pueblos estan bien formados con calles á cordel. Las casas de los Indios son en algunos pueblos de piedras cuadradas pero sin cal . . . otras de palos y barro todas cubiertas de teja, y todas tienen soportales ó corredores, unas con pilares de piedras, otras de madera.’
[161] Don Francisco Graell, an officer of dragoons in service during the War of the Seven Towns in 1750, gives the following description of the church of the mission of San Miguel: ‘La iglesia es muy capaz, toda de piedra de silleria con tres naves y media naranja. Muy bien pintada y dorada con un portico magnifico y de bellisima arquitectura, bovedas y media naranja son de madera, el altar mayor de talla, sin dorar y le falta el ultimo cuerpo.’