crowns were yearly collected; but on account of it the savages were forcibly deterred from embracing religion, perceiving that, if they became Christians, and the friends of the Spaniards, they must be eternally enslaved and miserable. The Spanish historians complain that the Indians were hardly treated and oppressed with labour by their masters, in many cities of Paraguay. The Indians, wearied with miseries, returned, whenever they could, to the ancient recesses of their forests. The Lules, who had formerly been baptized by St. Francisco Solano, and cruelly enslaved by the inhabitants of the city Esteco, fled to the woods which they had formerly inhabited; from whence the Jesuit Father Antonio Machoni, a Sardinian, brought them back, and with incredible labour civilized them in Valle Buena, and they have remained to this day in the town of St. Estevan. The warlike Calchaquis, deserting their Spanish masters, and scorning miserable servitude, returned to the caves of their native land, whence sallying forth, they afflicted Tucuman with frequent and bloody slaughters. The citizens of Concepcion, on the banks of the river Bermejo, were all destroyed by the Indians whom intolerable slavery had exasperated. The Jesuits, whilst, intent upon disseminating religion, they endeavoured to vindicate the liberty of the Indians, were often punished with exile, often with calumny and abuse, by those who had their own private interest more at heart than the augmentation of religion, or of the royal authority. The Indian towns, the inhabitants of which were subjected to private individuals, named Encomenderos, have long since been reduced, as I said, to such wretchedness, that they rather seemed shadows of towns, than the reality: whilst, on the other hand, the thirty-two towns of the Guaranies, ten of the Chiquitos, and smaller ones of other nations, the inhabitants of which were subject only to the Catholic Monarch, continually increased in population, and always remained and flourished under our discipline. I do not pretend to say that Paraguay and Brazil were at all times utterly destitute of Portugueze and Spaniards who paid strict obedience to the laws, who execrated the avarice and cruelty of their countrymen in regard to the Indians, and left no stone unturned to restore and protect their liberty, and to aid the progress of religion. But alas! those few with grief beheld themselves unable to correct a multitude of barbarians. Ability, not inclination was wanting.