CHAPTER XVI. OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE ABIPONES. The multitude and variety of tongues spoken in Paraguay alone, exceeds alike belief and calculation. Nor should you imagine that they vary only in dialect. Most of them are radically different. Truly admirable is their varied structure, of which no rational person can suppose these stupid savages to have been the architects and inventors. Led by this consideration, I have often affirmed that the variety and artful construction of languages should be reckoned amongst the other arguments to prove the existence of an eternal and omniscient God. The Jesuits have given religious instructions to fourteen nations of Paraguay, and widely propagated the Christian faith, in fourteen different languages. They did not each understand them all, but every one was well acquainted with two or three, namely, those of the nations amongst whom they had lived. Of the number of these was I, who spent seven years amongst the Abipones, eleven amongst the Guaranies. The nations for whom we laboured, and for whom founded colonies, were the Guaranies, Chiquitos, Mocobios, Abipones, Tobas, Malbalaes, Vilelas, Passaines, Lules, Isistines, Homoampas, Chunipies, Mataguayos, Chiriguanes, Lenguas or Guaycurùs, Mbayas, Pampas, Serranos, Patagones, and Yaròs. Moreover, the Guichua language, which is peculiar to the whole of Peru, and very familiar to Negro slaves, to the lower orders amongst the Spaniards, and even to matrons of the higher ranks in Tucuman, was used by many of the Jesuits, both in preaching and confession. Different languages were spoken too in the towns of the Chiquitos, which were composed of very different nations. The languages of the Abipones, Mocobios, and Tobas, certainly have all one origin, and are as much alike as Spanish and Portugueze. Yet they differ not only in dialect, but also in innumerable little words. The same may be said of the Tonocotè language, in use amongst the Lules and Isistines. The language of the Chiriguanes and Guaranies, who live full five hundred leagues apart, is the same, with the exception of a few words, which may be easily learnt in the course of two or three weeks by any one who understands either of them.