Mendoza had resigned his powers to his lieutenant, Ayolas, who ascended the Paraná and reached the Paraguay, there losing one of his ships. Those whom it had conveyed proceeded by land, and encountered a tribe in some respects civilized. The Carios possessed maize and the sweet potato, and in their farms were found ostriches, sheep, and pigs. Their capital was surrounded by stakes. The tribesmen offered the invaders provisions on condition of their departing. This not being accepted, a fight ensued, and the natives fled. Ayolas then founded a city, in which he took to himself, as we are told, seven wives, permitting two to each of his followers. The city was called Asuncion.
1537.
After the delay of some months in his new settlement, Ayolas determined to find his way in the direction of Peru; and taking with him a sufficient party, he left one of his officers, Irala, with fifty Spaniards, at Candelaria on the Paraguay, as a supporting party in case of his retreat. The succeeding months were occupied by him in wanderings in the primeval forest, where he received from a tribe the glad tidings of the presence of gold and silver in the adjacent regions. Ayolas and his party were, however, compelled to find their way back, when they were doomed to disappointment in not meeting Irala, who, despairing of their return, after waiting six months, had returned to Asuncion. Ayolas and his people were soon after murdered by the tribe of Payaguas. Irala meanwhile, having repaired his vessels, returned to Candelaria and made fresh, but of course fruitless efforts to discover Ayolas, whose death, when he had ascertained it, he cruelly avenged on some Payaguas.
1537.
Learning the tale of treasure to be found in the interior, Irala now bent his attention to discover it. At Buenos Ayres wealth could only be the reward of industry, and therefore the settlement founded by Mendoza was abandoned, and the whole Spanish colony flocked up the river to Asuncion. They mustered six hundred souls, and Asuncion thus became the earliest founded permanent city in the region of La Plata.
1540.
It being believed in Spain, before the fact was ascertained, that Ayolas was dead, the post of Adelantado of La Plata was conferred upon Don Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, who had passed ten years as a prisoner amongst the natives of Florida. Cabeza de Vaca sailed from Spain with four hundred followers in the year 1540, and by the following March had disembarked at Santa Catalina, an island on the coast of Brazil, opposite Paraguay, where confirmation reached him of the death of Ayolas. He thereupon boldly proceeded from a point of the shore near to Santa Catalina, making direct by land for Asuncion. He took with him two hundred and fifty men with twenty-six horses, sending the remainder by water to Buenos Ayres. During nineteen days Cabeza marched through woods ere reaching a settlement of Guaranís, from whom he was enabled to obtain abundance of food for his men.
Whilst resting with these friendly people, the explorer had the good fortune to fall in with a native on his way from Asuncion to Brazil, and who undertook to retrace his steps and guide him to his seat of government. Leaving a region where a certain degree of civilisation existed—where maize and mandioc were cultivated, and where men lived in houses and reared fowls and ducks—the Spanish leader had once more to trust himself and his men to the toils and risks of a march through the primeval forest, through which, after having surmounted innumerable difficulties, they at length approached their destination. In the course of one day they had to construct as many as eighteen bridges for the passage of their horses. This march had mainly lain along the course of the river Yguazû, a tributary of the Paraná, which takes its rise near the Atlantic Ocean. In order to avoid a tribe which was reported to be hostile, Cabeza de Vaca embarked with part of his force on canoes, intending to proceed thus to the Paraná, whilst the rest of his men should march along the river’s bank to the point of junction of the two streams. But there was an obstacle in his way which prevented the execution of this scheme. The Yguazû, which stream is about one mile in breadth, while it flows through the Brazilian forest, suddenly becomes contracted, at a short distance above its junction with the Paraná, to the breadth of rather less than a thousand yards. It then breaks into several channels and rushes over a series of descents, the highest of which is one hundred and seventy-two feet. Of this cataract—which, though little visited, is perhaps the grandest in South America—the vicinity is made known by the roar of waters and by the rising of a mist which overspreads the falls to a height of more than one hundred feet.
The Indians through whose settlements Cabeza had passed, though they had appeared friendly, had permitted him to embark on the Yguazû above the falls, without giving him warning of the danger that lay before him. The canoes that had been lent to the explorer were hurled with fearful rapidity along the face of the stream, and the rate of their passage became increased as they approached the scene of danger; but the distant sound of the falling waters warned Cabeza to steer for the bank, along which, for the distance of half a league, his followers carried their canoes, re-embarking below the falls, and then proceeding, without interruption, to the point of junction of the Yguazû with the Paraná.
Cabeza de Vaca was fortunate enough to disarm any hostile intentions which may have been harboured against him by a body of Guaranís that lined the further bank of the great river. They even helped him to effect his passage across the stream into what is now the territory of Paraguay. Sending down to the care of a friendly Indian chief, and with a guard of fifty soldiers, such of his men as would be unable to bear the fatigue of the march to Asuncion, the Spanish leader proceeded on his way by land; and, after further experience of the difficulties of travelling over so densely wooded a district, he at length, on the 11th of March, had the satisfaction of reaching the settlement of his fellow-countrymen.