The tyranny of Lopez, and the effects of the disastrous war with Brazil and the Argentine Republic, have almost extirpated every Paraguayan (of the old stock) with the least pretensions to white descent. Ruiz Diaz de Guzman, speaking of the mixed race in Paraguay and Buenos Ayres, says: ‘They are generally good soldiers, of great spirit and valour, expert in the use of arms, especially in that of the musquet, so much so that, when they go on long journeys, they are accustomed to live on the game which they kill with it. It is common for them to kill birds on the wing, and he is accounted unfit for a soldier who cannot bring down a pigeon. They are such excellent horsemen that there is no one who is not able to tame and ride an unbroken colt. ‘The women generally are virtuous, beautiful, and of a gentle disposition.’ If the inhabitants of Paraguay and the river Plate of those days were good marksmen, it is more than can be said of the Gauchos of the Argentine provinces and the Paraguayans of twenty years ago. Without military training, so far from being able to bring down a pigeon on the wing, few could hit the trunk of a tree at fifty paces. The usual method of shooting used to be to cram as much ammunition into the gun as the hand would contain, and then, looking carefully away from the object aimed at, to close both eyes and pull the trigger. Accuracy of aim was not so much considered as loudness of report. As regards their powers of riding, they are still unchanged; and as to the virtue of their women, virtue is so largely a matter of convention that it is generally wisest to leave such matters uncommented on, as it is so easy not to understand the conventions of the people of whom one writes. Whilst Irala was conciliating the Guaranís in Paraguay, Charles V. had not forgotten that the new settlement of Buenos Ayres had been abandoned. After much search, he selected Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca to be the new Governor; and, as Alvar Nuñez was perhaps the most remarkable of all the Spanish _conquistadores_ of the New World, it may not be out of place to give some facts of his career, as his policy in regard to the Indians was almost that of the Jesuits in after-times. As he himself informs us in his Commentaries,[36] his ‘father was that Pedro de Vera who won Canaria,’ and his mother ‘Doña Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, a noble lady of Jerez de la Frontera.’ After the Spanish fashion of the time, he used the names of both his parents.