We will consider these "ideal republics" more closely when we find them reorganised and more extended at a later date. For the moment it is enough to notice a curious inconsistency which appears even in apologetic accounts of them. To the Spaniards the Jesuits declared that the natives were so suspicious that no European could be allowed to visit the reductions, and the intercourse of the fathers with other Europeans had to be concealed; yet they refused to teach Spanish to the natives on the ground that intercourse with the Spaniards would corrupt their morals. Their critics naturally inferred that they kept the races apart so that their monopoly of the trade might not be disturbed, and drew unfriendly comparisons between the comfortable houses of the missionaries and the rough unfurnished huts of their converts. We will return to the point when the great controversy about the reductions begins after 1645. Before that date they had a series of disasters to face and were partially destroyed. The hostile tribe of the Mamelus descended on them and drove most of them out of Paraguay. Of a hundred thousand subjects in the province of Guayra the Jesuits only retained and transferred twelve thousand. The remaining Jesuit missions of the period may be dismissed briefly. They extended their operations to New Granada, but were expelled by the Archbishop of Santa Fe, at the complaint of the Spanish merchants, for mingling commerce with their preaching of the Gospel. In Canada they made little progress until the English abandoned that region in 1632, and even afterwards they found great difficulty in forming settlements among the Indians. Another attempt was made to enter Abyssinia, and this also ended in disaster. For services rendered by the Portuguese to the Emperor they were allowed to preach their faith and made many converts. A Jesuit at last became "Patriarch of Abyssinia," and he involved the Emperor in a sanguinary repression of the native Christian Church. On the accession of a new Emperor, however, they were denounced to him for a conspiracy to win the country for Portugal, and were expelled once more. Letters of theirs which were intercepted show that the charge was not groundless. In the same period, finally, they obtained, through France, permission to enter the Turkish Empire, and they began the work of organising the surviving Christians, and assailing the Nestorians, in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Armenia and Chaldæa. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 18: This rare and curious work, which was often condemned and burned in subsequent years, was published in 1654, and affords a particularly unpleasant picture of the Spanish Jesuits. It was attributed to a distinguished Dominican monk. He denied the authorship, but many believe that the denial was merely a matter of policy.] [Footnote 19: See the author's _Iron Cardinal_ (1909), p. 341.]