The lakes and backwaters of rivers are covered with myriads of water-lilies (all lumped together by the natives as ‘camalote’), whilst in the woodland pools the Victoria Regis carpets the water with its giant leaves. In every wood the orange and the lemon with the sweet lime have become wild, and form great thickets. Each farm and _rancho_ has its orange-grove, beneath the shade of which I have so often camped, that the scent of orange-blossom always brings back to me the dense primeval woods, the silent plains, the quiet Indians, and the unnavigated waterways, in which the alligators basked. Except the Sierra de Mbaracayu,[155] on the north-east, throughout the mission territory there are no mountains of considerable height; and through the middle of the country run the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, the latter forming the boundary on the south-east. The rolling plains and woods alternate with great marshes called _esteros_, which in some districts, as of that of Ñeembucu, cover large tracts of land, forming in winter an almost impenetrable morass, and in the spring and early summer excellent feeding-ground for sheep. Throughout the territory the climate is healthy, except towards the woody northern hills. With this rich territory and the false reports of mines, which even unsuccessful exploration could not dispel, it is but natural that the Jesuits were hated far and wide. It must have been annoying to a society composed, as were the greater portion of the Spanish settlements in Paraguay, of adventurers, who treated the Indians as brute beasts,[156] to see a preserve of Indians separated from their territory by no great barrier of Nature, and still beyond their power.[157] Bonpland, in speaking of the country, says: ‘The whole of the land exceeds description; at every step one meets with things useful and new in natural history.’ Such also was the opinion of the French travellers Demersay and D’Orbigny; of Colonel du Graty, whose interesting work (‘La République du Paraguay’, Brussels, 1862) is one of the best on the country; the recent French explorer Bourgade la Dardye, and of all those who have ever visited the missions of Paraguay.[158] In this rich territory the Jesuits, when, after infinite trouble, they had united a sufficient[159] quantity of Indians, formed them into townships, almost all of which were built upon one plan. In Paraguay itself only some three or four remain; but they remain so well preserved that, by the help of contemporary accounts, it is easy to reconstruct almost exactly what the missions must have been like during the Jesuits’ rule.[160]