from real danger, at others from the suspicion alone of an enemy. In the circumjacent estates and plains very many were despoiled of their substance, their cattle, and their life, by the assaulting savages. The light-armed cavalry, who were commanded to keep watch in the country and repress the enemy, suffered repeated losses. Waggons laden with silver from Peru, were often despoiled of their treasures, the soldiers who guarded and transported them being miserably butchered. The same savages have often proved fatal, always formidable, to the inhabitants of Barragan, a bay of the Rio de la Plata, where vessels are often drawn out and refitted. Those who went southward in great numbers for salt to the salt-pits, were sometimes slain to a man. Then at length the Spaniards perceived the utility of the southern colonies, after they had irrecoverably lost them. That so many thousand Indians who dwell in the southern parts, should be buried together in their darkness, is indeed a reflexion worthy of regret. Who will not deplore the infinite miseries of the Jesuits, who laboured for many years upon this people, the hardships of their journeys, their want of necessaries, the daily perils that threatened their lives, and the greatness of their labours,—labours almost fruitless, except indeed their sending to Heaven a considerable number of infants, baptized before their death, as also not a few adults? At first, before oxen and sheep were sent for their subsistence, the Fathers lived on horse-flesh, the daily food of those Indians. Father Thomas Falconer, who wandered over all the plains with his Indians to kill horse-flesh, having no plate of pewter or wood, always, in place thereof, made use of his hat, which grew at length so greasy, that it was devoured whilst he slept by the wild dogs with which the plains are over-run. Father Matthias Strobl's hut being set on fire by some villain or other, and the straw roof being already in flames, he would doubtless himself have perished, had he not been awakened from his deep sleep, by one who continued faithful to him, and rescued him from the conflagration. The town of Concepcion was situated in 322° 20´ longitude, and in latitude 36° 20´; that of Nuestra Señora del Pilar was distant from Concepcion seventy leagues to the south west; from Buenos-Ayres full an hundred and ten leagues; from the town of Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados only four.