[295] ‘Account of the Abipones’, vol. i., p. 32.
[296] The only man the Indians produced who showed any aptitude as a leader was a chief called Sepe Tyaragu. At his death in action in 1756 Nicolas Ñeenguiru succeeded to his post.
[298] Polyhorus tharus. In relation to the word ‘tharus’, which figures as a sort of scientific (or doggerel) cognomen to this bird, Mr. W. H. Hudson once pointed out to me that, like some other ‘scientific facts’, it originated in a mistake. The Pampa Indian name of the bird is ‘traré’. Molina (Don Juan Ignacio), in his ‘History of Chile’, happened to spell the word ‘tharé’, instead of ‘traré’, and then proceeded to make a dog-Latin form of it. Thus the bird has received its present scientific name.
[299] Cardiel, ‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 430: ‘. . . llego alli despues de la fuga y desamparo de los pueblos . . . saco a los dos Padres que estaban muy afligidos por la soledad y alboroto.’
[300] In a letter (Archivo de Simancas, Legajo 7,378, folio 128), Valdelirios, writing to the governor of Buenos Ayres, Don José de Caravajal y Lancastre, says: ‘Inagotables son los recursos de los Padres para que se dilate y no se ratifique el tratado. . . .’ But he gives no proof except that they had sent petitions to the King—surely a very constitutional thing for them to do.
[301] The letter was written originally in Guaraní, and a certified translation of it exists at Simancas, Legajo 7,385, folio 13.
[303] Don Pedro Cevallos, Governor of Buenos Ayres, who was in Paraguay in 1755, sent there to fight the troops of King Nicolas, found, as he himself says, ‘no King, and no troops, but a few half-armed Indians.’ Writing to the King, he says: ‘Los Jesuitas son utiles en el Paraguay.’
[304] The figures in Chapter VII. serve to show that in Paraguay, at least, they were not exactly millionaires. In Mexico, Palafox, the saintly Bishop of Puebla, had set about all kinds of stories as to their riches, but Geronimo Terenichi, an ecclesiastic sent to Mexico to examine into the question of the Jesuits and their wealth, after a year of residence, expressly says ‘they were very poor, and laden with debt’ (‘eran muy pobres y estaban cargados de deudas’): ‘Coleccion de los articulos de la Esperanza, sobre la Historia del Reinado de Carlos III.’, p. 435. Madrid, 1859.