[162] ‘Galerias con columnas, barandillas y escaleras de piedra entallada’ (Don Francisco Graell). See also P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 247), ‘En todos los pueblos hay reloj de sol y de ruedas,’ etc. The work of Padre Cardiel was written in 1750 in the missions of Paraguay, but remained unpublished till 1800, when it appeared in Buenos Ayres from the press of Juan A. Alsina, Calle de Mexico 1422. It is, perhaps, after the ‘Conquista Espiritual’ of Father Ruiz Montoya, the most powerful contemporary justification of the policy of the Jesuits in Paraguay. It is powerfully but simply written, and contains withal that saving grace of humour which has, from the beginning of the world, been a stumbling-block to fools.
[163] The mission of San Miguel had 1,353 families in it, or say 6,635 souls. San Francisco de Borja contained 650 families, or 2,793 souls (Report by Manuel Querini to the King, dated Cordoba de Tucuman, y Agosto 1o, 1750).
[164] In their extensive missions in the provinces of Chiquitos and Moxos they pursued the same system. As they were much more isolated in those provinces than in Paraguay, and consequently much less interfered with, it was there that their peculiar system most flourished. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from America in 1767, the Spaniards in Alta Peru, and subsequently the Bolivians, had the sense to follow the Jesuit plan in its entirety; whereas Bucareli, the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, entirely changed the Jesuits’ rule in Paraguay. The consequence was that in Bolivia the Indians, instead of dispersing as they did in Paraguay, remained in the missions, and D’Orbigny (‘Fragment d’un Voyage au Centre de l’Amérique Méridianale’) saw at the missions of Santiago and El Santo Corazon, in the province of Chiquitos, the remains of the Jesuits’ polity. There were ten missions in Chiquitos, and fifteen in Moxos. At the present time the Franciscans have some small establishments in Bolivia.
[165] ‘Pillos muy ladinos’ (Robertson, ‘Letters from Paraguay’).
[166] Ferrer del Rio, in his ‘Coleccion de los articulos de la Esperanza sobre Carlos III.’ (Madrid, 1859), says: ‘Fuera de las misiones de los Jesuitas particularmente en el Paraguay se consideraban los Indios entre los seres mas infelices del mundo.’
Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, in their celebrated ‘Secret Report’ (‘Noticias Secretas de America’): ‘La compañia (de Jesus) atiende a sus fines particularmente con los misioneros que llevan de España; pero con todo eso no se olvida de la conversion de los Indios, ni tiene abandonado este asunto pues aunque van poco adelante en el, que es lo que no se esperimenten en las demas religiones.’
[167] Many travellers, as Azara, Demersay, Du Graty, and D’Orbigny, have remarked how fond of music was the Guaraní race, and how soon they learned the use of European instruments. D’Orbigny (‘Fragment d’un Voyage au Centre de l’Amérique Méridianale’), in his interesting account of the mission of El Santo Corazon, in the district of Chiquitos, says: ‘Je fus très étonné d’entendre exécuter après les danses indigènes des morceaux de Rossini et . . . de Weber . . . la grande messe chantée en musique était exécutée d’une manière très remarquable pour des Indiens.’
Vargas Machuca, in his most curious and rare ‘Milicia y Descripcion de las Indias’, says, under the heading of ‘Musica del Indio’: ‘Usan sus musicas antiguas en sus regocijos, y son muy tristes en la tonada.’ To-day the Indians of Paraguay have songs known as tristes. The brigadier Don Diego de Alvear, in his ‘Relacion de Misiones’ (Coleccion de Angelis), says that the first to teach the Guaranís European music was a Flemish Jesuit, P. Juan Basco, who had been maestro de capilla to the Archduke Albert.
[168] See also P. Cardiel, ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 274: ‘. . . y esta acabada, se toca á Misa á que entran todos cantando el Bendito, y alabado en su lengua, ó en Castellano, que en las dos lenguas lo saben.’
[169] Dean Funes, in his ‘Ensayo de la Historia del Paraguay’, etc., says that in the estancia of Santa Tecla, in the missions of Paraguay, during the time of the Jesuits, there were 50,000 head of cattle.