Beef, and that wretchedly bad, was almost our only provision: though we sometimes tasted the wings of the emus which the Indians caught. We seldom or never used wine, except at mass. Our own privations, however, we could have borne with; the worst was our being destitute of the ordinary comforts and conveniences for the Indians. We had no provision to give them but ill-tasted beef, the oxen having grown extremely lean from the fatigues of the journey. Their daily employment, to pass away the time and to assuage their hunger, was hunting emus and collecting honey from under ground. Boars, stags, tamanduas, the fruits of palms and other trees, and eatable roots, all which abound in Chaco, are not to be found here. A numerous flock of sheep, which supplied us with wool for wearing-apparel, disappeared in one night: the Abipones, after diligently searching the woods and remoter plains, could discover no traces of them. Eight days after their disappearance one ram returned to the town, but what became of the rest is unknown to this day. Continual disturbances were added to our extreme poverty. As the highway leading out of Tucuman to Sta. Fè lay near the town, travellers frequently carried off our horses and oxen that were dispersed up and down the pastures. The same depredations were committed with impunity by parties of wandering savages. Many scouts were sent by Alaykin's hordesmen, who remained in their native place, to examine the situation of the town, and other particulars, to entice Malakin's people away, and to threaten them with hostile assaults and all sorts of extremities, unless they returned to the former colony. Malakin himself, however, remained firm, holding threats and promises in equal contempt, but not a few of his hordesmen were prevailed upon to revisit Alaykin's horde, afterwards rejoining us again and again. The perpetual going and returning of the savages was like the ebbing and flowing of the ocean. Alaykin, still unreconciled to the change of the town, infested all the ways between Cordoba and Sta. Fè with a great company of Abipones, and became highly formidable to all travellers. Of the Spanish merchants some were slain, some robbed, and others annoyed by vexatious detention.