[209] It is not to be supposed, however, that the Indians were kept in ignorance. P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’, p. 222), quoting from the Cedula Real of 1743, says that ‘in every one of the towns there is a school established to teach reading and writing in Spanish, and that on that account a great number of Indians are to be met who write well.’ Cardiel adds, on the same page, ‘Dos de ellos estan copiando ahora esto que yo escribo, y de mejor letra que la mia.’ [210] Dean Funes (‘Ensayo Critico’, etc.) puts the income from commerce of the thirty towns at a hundred thousand dollars, and informs us that, after taxation (to the Crown) had been deducted from it, it was applied to the maintenance of the churches and other necessary expenses, and by the end of the year little of it remained. [211] Don Martin de Barua, in his memorial to the King (1736), complaining of the Jesuits, puts the number of taxable Indians at forty thousand. The Commission appointed to examine into the charges in 1736, which reported in 1745 (a reasonable interval), affirmed that the taxable Indians only numbered 19,116. Each Indian paid an annual poll-tax of one dollar a year to the Crown. In addition to that, every town gave one hundred dollars a year. The salary of the priests was six hundred dollars a year (Azara, ‘Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale’). [212] ‘Account of the Abipones’. London: John Murray, 1822. [213] ‘Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale’. Paris: Denton, 1809. [214] Perámas (‘De vita et moribus sex sacerdotum Paraguaycorum, Petrus Joanes Andrea’, lxxxiv.) states that it appeared, from papers left after their expulsion, that the income of the Jesuit College of Cordoba just paid the expenses of administration (‘era con escasa diferencia igual á los gastos’). In the Archivo General of Buenos Ayres, legajo ‘Compañia de Jesús’, there is a document referred to by P. Hernandez in his introduction to the work of P. Cardiel (‘Declaracion de la Verdad’), which states that in the year of the expulsion the income of the thirty towns fell a little short of the expenses. [215] Azara, ‘Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale’; also Funes, ‘Ensayo Critico de la Historia del Paraguay’; and Padre Guevara, ‘Historia del Paraguay, Rio de la Plata y Tucuman’. [216] Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, legajo 7,450, folios 21 y 22, 5_a_, Copia de las cartas (sin firma; la siguiente es de Nicolas Neenguirú) que se hallaron en letra Guaraní traducidas por los interpreteo nombrados en las sorpresa hecha al pueblo de San Lorenzo por el Coronel D. José Joaquin de Viana, Gobernador de Montevideo, el dia 20 de Mayo de 1756: