readily and frankly, "our grandfathers and great grandfathers were wont to contemplate the earth alone, solicitous only to see whether the plain afforded grass and water for their horses. They never troubled themselves about what went on in the Heavens, and who was the creator and governour of the stars." I have observed the Abipones, when they are unable to comprehend any thing at first sight, soon grow weary of examining it, and cry _orqueenàm_? what is it after all? Sometimes the Guaranies, when completely puzzled, knit their brows and cry _tupâ oiquaà_, God knows what it is. Since they possess such small reasoning powers, and have so little inclination to exert them, it is no wonder that they are neither able nor willing to argue one thing from another. You cannot imagine in what dark colours the Europeans, who first entered these provinces, described the stupidity of the Americans. Brother Thomas Ortiz, afterwards Bishop of Sta. Martha, intimates in his letters to the Court of Madrid, that the Americans are foolish, dull, stupid, and unreasoning like beasts, that they are incapable of understanding the heads of religion, and devoid of human sense and judgement. Some of the Spaniards thought the Americans so stupid, that they wished to exclude them, even after they were grown up, from baptism, confession, and other sacraments, as being in the condition of infants who are not yet possessed of reason. Paul the Third was obliged to issue a bull, in the year 1537, the second of June, by which he pronounced the Indians to be really men, and capable of understanding the Catholic faith, and receiving the sacraments, the cause of the Indians being pleaded by Bartolomeo De las Casas, afterwards Bishop of Chiapa. The pontifical decree begins _Vetitas ipsa_, and is extant in Harold. Notwithstanding this, "the adult Indians in Peru, who have been baptized and properly confessed, do not partake of the divine communion once every year, nor indeed when on the point of death," as Acosta says in the eighth chapter of his work: _De procuranda Indorum Salute_. Nor did the exhortations and comminations of the famous councils at Lima procure the Indians permission to partake of the eucharist, as appears from the complaints and decrees of the synods held in the next century at Lima, Plata, Arequipa, Paza, and Paraguay. For the priests, who denied the eucharist, always alleged the stupidity, ignorance, and inveterate wickedness of the Indians in their excuse. But the synod held at Paza in the year 1638, was of opinion that this ignorance of the Indians should be ascribed to the negligence of their pastors, by whose sedulous instruction these wretches might have emerged from the native darkness of their minds, and from the slough of wickedness.