The instructions given, he left the missions never to return, leaving behind him the reputation of an honest man, having made, as it would appear, no money during his sojourn in their territories. On October 20, 1768, he wrote from Buenos Ayres to Aranda, telling him that his work was done, and asking him as a particular favour to implore the King to give him some employment ‘out of America, and particularly not under either the secretaryship or the Council of the Indies.’[332] Thus it appears that either the work in which he had been engaged was uncongenial to him, or he mistrusted the future and the Indians when the Jesuits’ sheltering hands had been withdrawn, and thought the King might blame him for what was sure to come. One passage in his letter of instructions shows that the antique, but still current, fashion of going to any length to obtain a country in which are situated even supposititious gold-mines had its influence even with such an honest man as Bucareli was. He specially enjoins upon the officials left in charge ‘to find out from what quarter the Indians of those towns extract those pieces of the precious metals which they sometimes bring to their priests.’ So that the fable of the false mines started by Cardenas, although a thousand times disproved, still lingered in the minds of those who could not understand what motive except that of growing rich could cause the Jesuits to bury themselves in the recesses of the Paraguayan woods. The release from things American and under the jurisdiction of the Council of the Indies did not come to Bucareli for almost two more years, during which time he struggled manfully with the affairs of the Jesuit missions, repelled the Chaco Indians on one side, and on the other implored for troops to defend the island of Chiloe against the heretic English, who at that time appear to have been meditating the advancement of their empire in the extremest south. One curious letter was reserved for Bucareli to indite before he quitted Buenos Ayres for the last time. On January 15, 1770, he sent a long declaration signed by the celebrated Nicolas Ñeenguirú and other Indians, giving an account of the part played by him in the abortive resistance which he made against the cession of the seven towns. This is the last time that Nicolas, the ‘King’ of Paraguay and ‘Emperor of the Mamelucos’, appears in any document as far as I can find. His name at one time was well known in Paraguay, the River Plate and Spain, and served to father many lies upon; and at the last, the Jesuits gone, he seems to have turned against them, and said all that was required by Bucareli to get up his case. It appears from Bucareli’s letter that the family of the Ñeenguirú had been well known in the missions from the time of Cardenas. In 1770[333] we find him shorn of his kingly and imperial dignities, the mayor of Concepcion in Paraguay, tall, taciturn, with long, lank hair, and much respected by his brother