Immediately on my entering the savage horde the preceding day, I had asked them to despatch messengers to acquaint the neighbouring Caciques of our arrival, and exhort them to visit us there. The next day about noon the armed savages arrived in great numbers with their families. Two Caciques led the troop. The first, who was called Veraripochiritù, equalled in height and fullness of body the length of his name, a man remarkable for nothing but gentleness and docility. His son, a handsome boy of ten years old, had all his face painted with small black stars. "You think," said I, "to adorn your face with these stars, but you have disfigured it most wretchedly. Come, behold yourself in this mirror." Having looked at his face a little while, he hastened to some water to wash it, and he, who with his naked limbs, had just before come to me a perfect Pyracmon, when he had wiped off the soot, seemed transformed into a Daphnis. I presented them all with the accustomed trifles, conversed familiarly with each, and very frequently with their Cacique Veraripochiritù, whom I found particularly disposed to our worship. The other Cacique, who appeared with his troop, was Tupanchichù, a man scarce forty years old, handsome and well made, but destitute of that fairness of face and candour of mind which the others boasted. Arrogant, crafty, and designing; under a placid countenance and a perilous suavity of speech, he contrived to cover his cherished purpose of slaying us, which was, however, discovered by others. On coming up he seated himself with me, and demanded, in an imperative tone, a portion of the herb of Paraguay. Some friendly interrogations having passed on both sides, I seized a favourable opportunity of discoursing on the Deity. "We already know," he observed, "that there is some one who dwells in heaven." To this I returned, "that God was the supreme creator and ruler; that he was a tender loving father, most worthy of our hearts and adorations; that it behoved them long ago to have known and understood what pleased and what displeased him." "Tell me, I pray you," said he, "what _does_ displease God." "He abhors," I rejoined, "and terribly punishes adulteries, uncleannesses, lies, calumnies, thefts, homicides." "What," he enquired, interrupting me, with a haughty look, "does not God permit us to slay our enemies? Should we be such fools as not to defend ourselves against those that seek our lives? Such has been my custom if any one threatened mine." I endeavoured to convince the fanatical casuist of his error, and to instil into him a horror of human slaughter, with what success I know not. At that time I learnt from good authority, that this barbarous Cacique, who was feared by the whole neighbourhood as a formidable juggler, displayed in his tent an heap of sculls, whose former possessors he had taken off, partly by poison partly by violence.