The Spaniards, Indians, Negroes, or Mulattoes, taken by them in war, they do not ill-use like captives, but treat with kindness, and indulgence; I had almost said like children. If a master wants his captive to do any thing, he signifies it in an asking, not a commanding tone. _If you please_, he gently says, or _take compassion on me_, and _bring me my horse, Amamàt gröhöchem_, or _Grcáuagiikàm, yañerla ahöpegak tak nahörechi ena_. I never saw a captive, however dilatory or hesitating in performing his master's orders, punished either with a word or a blow. Many display the tenderest compassion, kindness, and confidence towards their captives. To clothe them, they will strip their own bodies, and though very hungry, will deprive themselves of food to offer it them, if they stand in need of it. An old woman, wife of the chief Cacique Alaykin, has frequently got the horse ready and saddled it, in my presence, for a Negro captive of her's. Another old woman, mother of the Cacique Revachigi, gave up her bed for many nights to a sick boy, one of her captives, and, lying miserably on the floor herself, watched day and night in attendance upon him. By this kindness and wish to gratify, they bind their captives so firmly to them, that they never think of taking advantage of the daily opportunities afforded them of flight, being perfectly well satisfied with their situation. I knew many, who, after being ransomed, and brought back to their own country, voluntarily returned to their Abiponian masters, whom they follow both to the chase and to the combat; little scrupulous about shedding the blood of Spaniards, though Spaniards themselves. What a subject for lamentation have we here! How many Spaniards by birth, brought up from childhood amongst the Abipones, and instructed in their ceremonies, customs, and a hundred arts of injury, became the destroyers of Paraguay, their native soil! Whenever these men were present at the bloody expeditions of the savages, they were not only companions of the journey, but guides and partakers in all the slaughter, burning, and plundering committed at such times; in a word, instruments of public calamities, in the same manner as the Portugueze, Spanish, and Italian renegadoes, who did so much service to the pirates of Algiers and Morocco, by intercepting the vessels of their countrymen.