Somehow, I like those countries which, as the province of Guayrá and Paraguay, appear to have no future, and of which the charm is in the past. It pleases me to think that the sharp business men of times gone by, patting their stomachs (the prison of their brain), predicted great advancement, and were all deceived. For then it seems as if the prognostications of to-day’s schemes may also fail, and countries which they have doomed to progress still remain as is Guayrá, their towns deserted, with but the broken spire of some old church emerging from the verdure of the tropics, as the St. Paul’s Rocks rise sheer out of the sea. If there is charm in the unknown, there is at least as great a charm in the forgotten, and the Salto de Guayrá is one of the most forgotten corners of the earth. To this wild place Father Mendoza proposed to lead the Indians from the Reductions of San José and San Francisco Xavier, and then unite with them any of the fugitives he could assemble from those reductions which had been destroyed. But even the doglike patience of the Indians was at an end, and they preferred to die or be led captives rather than run the chances of escape in such a solitary place. In their despair, and placed between the Paulistas and the fear of emigration, the neophytes turned, as even more civilized people than themselves will turn, on their best friends, and held the Jesuits responsible for all their woes. Two Indian women, wives of _caciques_, having been taken by the Paulistas, the Indians broke into the church where a Jesuit (Padre Salazar) was officiating, and interrupted him during the Mass with the most bitter insults. One of the Indians menaced him with a lance, another with an arrow, whilst a third tried to snatch the chalice from his hands. He escaped, and ran, holding the chalice, out into the woods, followed by two little Indian boys. Wandering about, he fell in with the other Jesuits, all like himself outcasts, without a church, and almost deserted by the Indians. Padre Ruiz Montoya alone possessed a shadow of authority, and he advised the outcasts with the remnant of their flocks to retire into the woods, and sow a crop of maize for food, whilst he endeavoured to get help from Paraguay. Hardly was this done, when news was brought him which made him alter all his plans. Two messengers came to inform him that an army of Paulistas was marching on Villa Rica, and that a strong detachment of them was advancing from the south. Then Padre Montoya took a supreme resolve, and ordered the evacuation of the two principal reductions (San Ignacio and Loreto) which yet remained intact. They were the first which had been founded in Guayrá, and were as important as any of the Spanish towns in Paraguay. The churches, all the Jesuit writers, as Montoya, Charlevoix, Mastrilli, and Lozano, are agreed, were finer than any in the land. The Indians were, according to Montoya, far better Christians than the inhabitants of the Spanish