Seated around the fire ‘smoking tobacco through a reed’, and pondering perchance over the mysteries of the new expounded faith, the _cacique_ of the Itatines took up his parable. ‘I have’ (said he) ‘conceived an affection for the father-priest, and hope to enjoy his company throughout my life. My daughter is the prettiest girl in the whole world, and I am now resolved to give her to the father-priest, that he may always stay with me, and with my family, here in the woods.’ The Indians from the missions broke into laughter, after the fashion of all those who, knowing but a little, think that they are wise. The _cacique_, who knew nothing, was astounded that any man, no matter what his calling, could live without a wife, and asked the Jesuit if the strange thing was true. His doubts being satisfied, they fell discoursing on the nature of the Deity, a subject not easy of exhaustion, and difficult to treat of through the medium of an interpreter. ‘We know’ (the _cacique_ said) ‘that there is someone who dwells in heaven.’ This vagueness put the missionary upon his mettle, and he set out at once to expatiate upon the attributes of God. They seemed to please the _cacique_, who inquired, ‘What is it that displeases, then, the dweller in the skies?’ Lies, calumnies, adulteries, thefts, all were enumerated, and received the Indian’s assent; but the injunction not to kill provoked a bystander to ask if it was not permitted to a man to slay those who attacked his life. He added, ‘I have endeavoured so to do since the first day I carried arms.’ ‘Fanatical casuist’ is a stout argument in the mouth of a man nurtured upon Suarez and Molina, but no doubt it did good service, and Dobrizhoffer uses it when speaking of the chief. But Dobrizhoffer did better work than mere theological disputation, for he prevailed upon eighteen of the Indians to accompany him to the settlement of San Joaquin; and after having ‘for some months tried the constancy’ of a youth called Arapotiyu, he admitted him to the sacrament of baptism, and ‘not long afterwards united him in marriage according to the Christian rites.’ It is evident that baptism should precede marriage; but it is an open question as to the duration of the interval between the two ceremonies, and we may be permitted to wonder whether, after all, both might not be advantageously dispensed at the same time. In the case of Arapotiyu the system worked satisfactorily, for he ‘surpassed in every kind of virtue, and might have been taken for an old disciple of Christianity.’ Even ‘old Christians’ occasionally, despite their more laborious induction into the rites and customs of their faith, have fallen from grace, perhaps from the undue prolongation of the term between the ceremonies.