Meantime, it being reported that Gomez Freyre de Andrade, governour of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, and the author of all these calamities, had entered their territories with his forces, to arms was the immediate cry, and each being forced along by the common impulse, the united body rolled onwards like a mighty river; you would have thought there was a second Hannibal at the gates. Thus, while the Guaranies repelled force by force, in defence of their churches and fire-sides, they are proclaimed rebels—worthier, in fact, of pity than of punishment; for maddened by their rooted hatred of the Portugueze and the love of their country, they were hurried blindly on wherever their passions impelled them. To shake off the Spanish yoke—to injure the neighbouring colonies of the Spaniards, never so much as entered their thoughts: their ancient love towards their monarch still burnt in their breasts, but it was not powerful enough to extinguish the innate love of their country. Who, then, can wonder that the weak-minded Indian left no stone unturned, to avoid his expulsion from a land he could not fail to love,—a land pleasant in its situation, salubrious in its climate, wide in extent, the envy of the Spanish cities for its churches and other edifices, adorned with woods, with rivers, and with plains of the greatest fertility, and lastly, well stored with all the necessaries of subsistence? Joachim de la Viana, governor of Monte-Video, sent forward with a detachment of cavalry to explore the country, having leaped from his horse on the summit of an eminence, and examined through a telescope the city of S. Miguel, (a place inhabited by seven thousand Indians, and famous for its magnificent churches and famous row of buildings,) in his astonishment at the size of the place, exclaimed to the horsemen about him,—"Surely our people at Madrid are out of their senses, to deliver up to Portugal this town, which is second to none in Paraguay." This he said, though a strenuous favourer of the Portugueze, whose party he embraced to ingratiate himself with Barbara, Queen of Spain. The six other towns—those of S. Juan, S. Lewis, S. Nicholas, S. Borgia, and S. Lawrence, were also eminent for the number of their inhabitants and the beauty of their churches, though neither of them was fortified with wall, ditch, palisadoes, or even a gate.