[243] Dobrizhoffer calls the Tobatines by the name of Itatines. Charlevoix and others refer to them as Tobatines. [244] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 54. [245] In 1873, when I visited the outskirts of this forest, the conditions were similar to those which Dobrizhoffer describes, with the addition that the depopulation of the country, owing to the recent long war, had allowed the tigers to multiply to an extraordinary degree, and my guide and myself, after feeding our horses, had to sleep alternately, the waker holding the two horses hobbled and bridled. [246] The whole operation of collecting and preparing the leaves of the _Ilex Paraguayensis_, to make the _yerba-maté_, was most curious. Bands of men used to sally out for a six-months’ expedition, either by land with bullock-waggons, or up one of the rivers in flat-bottomed boats, which were poled along against the rapid current by crews of six to twelve men. Arrived at the _yerbal_, as the forest was called, they built shelters, after the fashion of those in use amongst the larger of the anthropoid apes. Some roamed the woods in search of the proper trees, the boughs of which they cut down with machetes, whilst others remained and built a large shed of canes called a _barbacoa_. On this shed were laid the bundles of boughs brought from the woods, and a large fire was lighted underneath. During forty-eight hours (if I remember rightly) the toasting went on; then, when sufficiently dry, the leaves were stripped from the twigs, and placed on a sort of open space of hard clay, something like a Spanish threshing-floor. On this they were pounded fine, and the powder rammed into raw-hide bags. This concluded the operations, and the _yerba_ was then ready for the ‘higgling of the market’. [247] _Traduttore traditore_, as the proverb says. [248] Charlevoix says, in his ‘Histoire de la Nouvelle France’, speaking of the Indians in general: ‘L’expérience a fait voir qu’il étoit plus à propos de les laisser dans leur simplicité et dans leur ignorance, que les sauvages peuvent être des bons Chrétiens sans rien prendre de notre politesse et de notre façon de vivre, ou du moins qu’il falloit laisser faire au tems pour les tirer de leur grossièreté, qui ne les empêche pas de vivre dans une grande innocence, d’avoir beaucoup de modestie, et de servir Dieu avec une piété et une ferveur, que les rendent très propres aux plus sublimes opérations de la grâce.’ Had more people thought with Charlevoix, and not been too anxious to draw savages incontrovertibly to our ‘politesse’ (_sic_) and ‘façon’, and left more to time (‘au tems’), how much misery might have been saved, and how many interesting peoples preserved! For, in spite of the domination of the Anglo-Saxon race, it might have been wise to leave other types, if only to remind us of our superiority.