[38] _Asiento_ is a contract. The contract which Charles V., at the well-meant but unfortunate instigation of Las Casas, made with the Genoese to supply negroes for America is known as ‘El Asiento de los Negros’. [39] In the _capitulacion_ made by Alvar Nuñez with the King occurs the celebrated clause, ‘Que no pasasen procuradores ni abogados a las Indias’, _i.e._, that neither solicitors nor barristers should go to the Indies. It is unfortunate it was not held to stringently, as in Paraguay, at least, the Reptilia were already well represented. [40] This is perhaps the first account of the levying of the tithe in the New World. [41] These backwaters are known in Guaraní by the name of _aguapey_. [42] The vinchuca is a kind of flying bug common in Paraguay. Its shape is triangular, its colour gray, and its odour noxious. It is one of the Hemiptera, and its so-called scientific appellation is _onorhinus gigas_. [43] R. B. Cunninghame Graham writes elsewhere: “All over South America the jaguar is called a tiger (tigre).”—A. L., 1998. [44] Azara, in his ‘Historia del Paraguay’, etc., tells us that in 1551 Domingo de Irala at Asuncion bought a fine black horse for five thousand gold crowns. He bound himself to pay for him out of the proceeds of his first conquest. [45] ‘Comentarios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’, contained in Barcia’s ‘Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales’. [46] The ‘patriots’ are always those of the prevailing party in a State. [47] ‘(I.H.S.) ‘God preserve your Excellency, say we, the Cabildo, and all the Caciques and Indians, men, women and children of San Luis, as your Excellency is our father. The Corregidor, Santiago Pindo and Don Pantaleon Caynari, in their love for us, have written to us of certain birds which they desire we will send them for the King. . . . We are sorry not to have them to send, inasmuch as they live where God made them, in the forests, and fly far away from us, so that we cannot catch them. Withal we are the vassals of God and of the King, and always desirous to fulfil the wishes of his Minister . . . so we pray to God that that best of birds, the Holy Ghost, may descend upon the King. . . . Furthermore, we desire to say that the Spanish custom is not to our liking—for everyone to take care of himself, instead of helping one another in their daily toil.’ This quaint and touching letter was written originally in Guaraní, and is preserved at Buenos Ayres. ‘That best of birds, the Holy Ghost,’ shows faith grounded, at least, on ornithology, and the whole spirit of the simple document is as pathetic as its unconscious philosophy is true.