voyages, the larger for the uses of war. These latter will hold forty warriors. If their designs be against the Spaniards, many of them join together in one fleet, and are the more dangerous from their drawing so little water, which enables them to lurk within the shelter of the lesser rivers, or islands, till a favourable opportunity presents itself of pillaging loaden vessels, or of disembarking and attacking the colonies. These savages, though more like beasts than men in their outward appearance, do nevertheless in the contrivance of their designs discover amazing subtlety. For many years they continued to pillage the Spanish colonies, and all the ships that came in their way, from the city of Asumpcion, forty leagues southwards. To the cities of Asumpcion and Corrientes, to the vicinity of Buenos-Ayres, and to the Guarany and Spanish towns, I appeal as witnesses. Heaps of dead bodies, crowds of boys and girls driven away, houses reduced to ashes, wares, and all kinds of precious furniture carried off, and churches laid waste—these are the monuments of the barbarous ferocity of these pirates: documents of their deceit yet fresh in the memory of man, on my coming into Paraguay. Many tribes of Payaguas yet remain, who, though bound by no tie of friendship to the Spaniards, cause them no apprehension, because they live remote from the city of Asumpcion, on the northern parts of the Paraguay, and on the shores of the rivers flowing into it, which the Spaniards seldom visit. But the Portugueze who dwell in Cayaba are sometimes taken, and sometimes slain by Payaguas still practising piracy.