[249] Hell not infrequently seems to have struck the Indians as a joke, for Charlevoix relates that when the first missionaries expatiated on its flames to the Chirignanós, they said, ‘If there is fire in hell, we could soon get enough water to put it out.’ This answer scandalized the good priest, who could not foresee that the flames of Tophet would be extinguished without the necessity of any other waters than those of indifference. [250] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 74. [251] Padre del Techo, in his ‘History of Paraguay’, says of the wood Indians that ‘they died like plants which, grown in the shade, will not bear the sun.’ [252] San Joaquin, San Estanislao, and Belen. [253] Notably those of Azara. [254] ‘Account of the Abipones’, p. 15. [255] As that of Philip V., from the palace of Buen Retiro, December 28, 1743, and his two letters to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Also the previous edict obtained by Montoya from Philip II., and by the various additions on the same head made from time to time to the code known as ‘The Laws of the Indies’. [256] Since the discovery of America the Spaniards and the Portuguese had been in constant rivalry throughout the south-eastern portion. Their frontier, between what are now Brazil and Argentina, had never been defined. In 1494 King John II. of Castile concluded a treaty signed at Tordesillas with the King of Portugal, placing the dividing-line between the countries two hundred leagues more to the westward than that of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI. (May 4, 1493), which placed it at one hundred leagues west of Cape Verd, cutting the world in two from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole. From the signing of the treaty of Tordesillas trouble began in South America between the Powers, as by that treaty a portion of Brazil came into the power of Portugal. [257] These were the towns of San Angel, San Nicolas, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan, and San Borja. [258] According to the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia (in the article titled “Reductions of Paraguay”) this treaty, signed in secret on 15 January 1750, was a deliberate assault on the Jesuit Order by the Ministers of Spain and Portugal, the latter of whom, Pombal, is said to have been responsible also for the false and libelous ‘Histoire de Nicolas I., Roy du Paraguai et Empereur des Mamalus’ (referred to in this chapter) which was distributed throughout Europe as another attack on the Jesuits. As anyone familiar with the situation could see that the Indians would not be happy about the treaty’s requirement to abandon their homes, it was a well-calculated, though detestable, move.—A. L., 1998.