Montoya, in opposition to the modern style, tries to shift the burden of the praise on to the shoulders of the Provincial, Padre Francisco Lopez Truxillo,[93] but with indifferent success. This matter of bearing your own praise will require regulation in the future, when an advance of civilization has opened people’s eyes to the perception that praise is just as disagreeable to the sufferer as is blame. The sentinel whom they had placed to warn them of the enemy’s approach gave the alarm. Montoya sent at once to Ciudad Real for help, but the Spanish settlers were too hard pressed themselves to give assistance. Nothing remained but to make a portage of all their rafts, boats, and canoes, and then to re-embark and sail down the Paraná out of the reach of the Paulistas. Montoya passed in review his boats, and found he had seven hundred, and that twelve thousand people had embarked with him on leaving the Paranapané. When the Paulistas found the Jesuits had evacuated all their towns, they burnt the churches, on the principle, perhaps, that, the nests once pulled down, the rooks would not return. They turned the Jesuit cells into barracks for themselves, taking, as Montoya says with horror, ‘infamous women’ into those chaste abodes, where never woman had passed through the doors. The Paulistas then entered into a rigorous examination[94] of the Jesuits’ private lives, hoping to find some scandal to bring against them. Especially they questioned the Indian women, giving them presents to discover everything they knew. All was in vain, the discipline of the Order, or the strict conscientiousness of the individual members of it, not having given scandal any hold.[95] The most difficult part of the great exodus was now to come. The rapids and the cataracts of the Paraná extend to nearly ninety miles, and the whole country is a maze of tangled forest interspersed with rocks. No paths exist, the place is desert, and over the dank mass of vegetation the moisture from the clouds of vapour thrown up by the falling water descends in never-ending rain.[96] In order to endeavour to save the trouble of reconstructing new rafts and canoes at the bottom of the cataract, Montoya launched three hundred empty boats (sending an Indian in advance) to see if any of them would arrive safely at the bottom of the falls. Not one escaped; and so the pilgrimage began, almost without provisions and without arms, in the middle of a country quite uncultivated, and where game was scarce.[97] To make things worse, intelligence was brought that, a few miles below the beginning of the falls, the Spaniards of Guayrá had built a wooden fort, surrounded with a strong stockade, hoping to intercept the retreating Indians, and make slaves of any who might fall into their hands. Montoya himself, dressed as an Indian, went out to observe the enemy, and on his return the whole immense assemblage silently plunged into the woods, leaving so