In the same way the word ‘Paraguay’ is variously derived from a corruption of the word ‘Payaguá’ (the name of an Indian tribe), and _y_, the Guaraní word for water, meaning river of the Payaguas. Others, again, derive it from a Guaraní word meaning ‘crown’, and _y_, water, and make it the crowned river, either from the palm-trees which crown its banks or the feather crowns which the Indians wore at the first conquest. Others, again, derive it from a bird called paraquá (_Ortolida paraqua_). Again, Angelis, in his work ‘Serie de los Señores Gobernadores del Paraguay’ (lib. ii., p. 187), derives it from Paraguá, the name of a celebrated Indian chief at the time of the conquest. What is certain is that _y_ is the Guaraní for water, and this is something in a derivation. _Y_ is perhaps as hard to pronounce as the Gaelic _luogh_, a calf, the nasal _gh_ in Arabic, or the Kaffir clicks, having both a guttural and a nasal aspiration.[27] It is rarely attempted with success by foreigners, even when long resident in the country. Though Paraguay was so completely the country of the Jesuits in after-times, they were not the first religious Order to go there. Almost in every instance the ecclesiastics who accompanied the first conquerors of America were Franciscans. The Jesuits are said to have sent two priests to Bahia in Brazil ten years after their Order was founded, but both in Brazil and Paraguay the Franciscans were before them in point of time. San Francisco Solano, the first ecclesiastic who rose to much note as a missionary, and who made his celebrated journey through the Chaco in 1588-89 from Peru to Paraguay, was a Franciscan.[28] Thus, the Franciscans had the honour of having the first American saint in their ranks. It is noteworthy, though, that he was recalled from Paraguay by his superiors, who seem to have had no very exalted opinion of him. Charlevoix remarks (‘History of Paraguay’) ‘that it seems as if Providence, in granting him miraculous powers, had forgotten the other necessary steps to make them effective.’ That he really had these powers seems strange, but San Francisco Solano narrates of himself that, in passing through the Chaco, he learned the languages of several of the tribes, and ‘preached to them in their own tongues of the birth, death, and transfiguration of Christ, the mysteries of the Trinity, Transubstantiation, and Atonement; that he explained to them the symbols of the Church, the Papal succession from St. Peter downwards, and that he catechized the Indians by thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands, and that they came in tears and penitence to acknowledge their belief.’