us in his Commentaries, started with four hundred men and with one thousand friendly Indians, all well armed and painted, and with plates of metal on their heads to reflect the sun, and so strike terror to their enemies. To save the horses they were put on board,[44] whilst the Indians marched along the bank, keeping up with the ships. Horses at that time in Paraguay and in Peru often were worth one thousand crowns of gold, though Azara tells us that in the last century in Buenos Ayres you could often buy a good horse for two needles, so cheap had they become. Then, as at present, time was of no account in Paraguay, so almost every day they landed the horses to keep them in condition and to chase the ostriches and deer. Just the kind of army that a thinking man would like to march with; not too much to eat, but, still, a pleasant feeling of marching to spread religion and to make one’s fortune, with but the solitary unpleasant feature to the soldier—the system of payment for provisions which the Governor prescribed. All was new and strange; the world was relatively young. Each night the Governor religiously wrote up his diary, now chronicling the death of some good horse, or of an Indian, or commenting upon the fruits, the fish, the animals, the trees, and ‘all the other things of God which differ from those in the Castiles.’ Occasionally a fight took place with Guasarapos or with Pagayuás, but nothing of much account (_de mucha monta_); always the tales of gold-mines to be met with further on. Eventually the expedition came to a point not far from where is now the town of Corumbá. There Alvar Nuñez founded a town to which he gave the name of Reyes, which has long fallen into decay. He also sent two captains to explore and search for gold, waiting two or three months for their return, and suffering from a quartan ague which confined him to his bed; then, having failed to find the talked-of gold-mines, he set his face again towards Asuncion. Just before starting he gave the final blow to his waning popularity. Some of his followers, having taken Indian girls, had hidden them on board the ships; this, when he knew it, Nuñez at once forbade, and, sending for the fathers of the girls, restored their children to them. ‘With this,’ he says, ‘the natives were much pleased, but the Spaniards rendered angry and desperate, and for this cause they hated me.’ Nothing more natural, and for the same cause the Spanish Paraguayans hated the Jesuits who carried out the policy which the wise Governor began.