[241] ‘History of the Abipones’, from the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, London, 1822.
It is a curious circumstance that in the missions in the Chaco there were negro slaves, though in the Paraguayan missions they were unknown. In the inventory of the town of San Lucas appear the following entries, under the head of ‘Negros Esclavos’:
‘Justo, que sirve de capataz en el campo; será de edad de veinte y siete años, mas ó menos segun su aspecto.’
‘Item, Pedro, será de diez y seis años y es medio fatuo.’
‘Item, José Felix, será de un mes y medio.’
[242] Though 1747 was the date of the final founding of these reductions, as early as 1697 about four hundred Indians were discovered in the woods of the Taruma by Fathers Robles and Ximenes, and established in the mission of Nuestra Señora de Fe; but in the year 1721 they all returned to the woods, a famine and an outbreak of the small-pox having frightened them. After being again established in a mission, and again having left it, in 1746, they were established definitely at San Joaquin.
[243] Dobrizhoffer calls the Tobatines by the name of Itatines. Charlevoix and others refer to them as Tobatines.
[244] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 54.
[245] In 1873, when I visited the outskirts of this forest, the conditions were similar to those which Dobrizhoffer describes, with the addition that the depopulation of the country, owing to the recent long war, had allowed the tigers to multiply to an extraordinary degree, and my guide and myself, after feeding our horses, had to sleep alternately, the waker holding the two horses hobbled and bridled.
[246] The whole operation of collecting and preparing the leaves of the Ilex Paraguayensis, to make the yerba-maté, was most curious. Bands of men used to sally out for a six-months’ expedition, either by land with bullock-waggons, or up one of the rivers in flat-bottomed boats, which were poled along against the rapid current by crews of six to twelve men. Arrived at the yerbal, as the forest was called, they built shelters, after the fashion of those in use amongst the larger of the anthropoid apes. Some roamed the woods in search of the proper trees, the boughs of which they cut down with machetes, whilst others remained and built a large shed of canes called a barbacoa. On this shed were laid the bundles of boughs brought from the woods, and a large fire was lighted underneath. During forty-eight hours (if I remember rightly) the toasting went on; then, when sufficiently dry, the leaves were stripped from the twigs, and placed on a sort of open space of hard clay, something like a Spanish threshing-floor. On this they were pounded fine, and the powder rammed into raw-hide bags. This concluded the operations, and the yerba was then ready for the ‘higgling of the market’.