After the customary salutations on both sides, I made my excellent friend Barreda acquainted with the state of the colony. We held continual consultations on the speediest remedies. In a few days a courier was dispatched with letters to Martinez, Governor of Tucuman, at Salta, whence the Governor sent another to Xexui, where the keepers of the royal treasury reside. In the meantime, I was obliged to remain at St. Iago, where I was by no means unemployed. Besides attending to the business of the colony, I was almost daily occupied in confessing Spanish and Negro penitents, who flocked to me from all quarters, as being a stranger, and likely soon to leave the city. The Governor Martinez had often and earnestly requested that Alaykin, and the other Abiponian Caciques, might be sent to visit him at Salta, as he was in hopes of being able to conciliate them by fair words, handsome entertainment, and liberal gifts: but the savages are of a suspicious and fearful temper, and always apprehend treachery and deceit in the friendship of the Spaniards. Alaykin, though often invited, had uniformly declined going: now, induced by what reasons I do not know, he suddenly arrived, whilst I was at St. Iago, with two of the more reputable Abipones, and after resting three days in that city, pursued his journey to Salta. The provident Barreda sent two Spaniards with him, one to act as guide, the other as interpreter, and both as defenders against assailants. This journey was little approved either by Barreda or myself; because we foresaw that should any one of the Abipones perish amongst those rocks, either from the unwonted cold of a foreign clime; or from tertian ague, which is very common there, on account of the unwholesome water; or from any other cause; the whole Abiponian nation would undoubtedly attribute it to the malignant arts of the Spaniards, and this suspicion would be the origin of an immediate war. The first day that the Abipones spent at St. Iago they were very near conceiving suspicions injurious to the Spaniards. At that time the yearly rite was solemnized of carrying about the holy wafer, some praying with a loud voice, some singing, and others dancing, to imitate David when he leapt before the ark of the covenant. To testify the public joy, very small muskets were fired up and down the streets. The Abipones, as yet ignorant of these ceremonies, would have sworn that the Spaniards were saluting them with gunpowder, had I not made them sensible of their error. At the time when the procession is passing through the streets, men dressed in a ridiculous costume like merry-andrews, and called by the Paraguayrians _Cachidiablos_, run about, and strike the common people with a whip, if they trespass upon silence or religious decorum. Suppose one of the Abipones, whilst walking about unarmed, had received a single blow from these foolish harlequins, when would they have ceased complaining of the injury done them by the Spaniards? What an argument