arranged for mutual convenience, yet in their dealings with the outside world the Jesuits adhered to what are known as ‘business principles’. These principles, if I mistake not, have been deified by politicians with their ‘Buy in the cheapest, sell in the dearest’ tag, and therefore even the sternest Protestant or Jansenist (if such there still exist) can have no stone to throw at the Company of Jesus for its participation in that system which has made the whole world glad. Cotton and linen cloth, tobacco, hides, woods of the various hard-wood forests of the country, and, above all, _yerba-maté_, were their chief articles of export to the outside world. Their nearest market was in Buenos Ayres, and to that port they sent their _yerba_ in boats made at their own yards, of which they had several, but notably at Yapeyú upon the Uruguay. The money that was made was sent to the Superior of the missions, who had the disposition of the way in which it was dispensed, either for use at home or to be sent to Europe for necessary goods. As well as _yerba-maté_, they sent great quantities of hides. The inventories of the towns taken at the expulsion state that the number of green hides[197] exported annually was fifty thousand, together with six thousand cured; in addition they sold from three to four arrobas[198] of horse-hair, and wood to the value of twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars every year. The total export of their _yerba_ ranged between eighty and one hundred thousand arrobas, which at the lowest price could not have been sold at a profit under seven dollars an arroba,[199] so that the income[200] of the thirty towns must have been relatively large.[201] Two or three hundred barrels of honey[202] and some three or four thousand arrobas of tobacco made up the sum total of their exports, though, had they needed money, it might have been increased in such a country, and with so many willing labourers, almost indefinitely. Thus it will be seen that the missions were organized both agriculturally and commercially so as to be almost self-supporting, and that of the mere necessaries of life they had sufficient for exportation, no small achievement when we consider how averse from labour were the Indians with whom they had to deal. But that nothing should be wanting that a civilized community could possibly desire, they had their prisons, with good store of chains, fetters, whips, and all the other instruments with which the moral code is generally enforced. The most usual punishment was whipping;[203] and the crimes most frequent were drunkenness, neglect of work, and bigamy, which latter lapse from virtue the Jesuits chastised severely, not thinking, being celibates themselves, that not unlikely it was apt to turn into its own punishment without the aid of stripes. Chapter VII