bringing a booty of at least two thousand horses, to display which they passed on at a distance, in sight of the colony, but beyond the reach of my weapon. Though greatly distressed at the loss of their horses, my Abipones saluted the plunderers with festive drumming and joyful vociferation, exulting that they who had come with a design of carrying off men, had been forced to content themselves with beasts. After besieging us for some time, the savages joined their companions, nor was their retreat disorderly. By order of the Caciques, two companies preceded the drove of horse, as many followed it, and the rest went on each side. As usual they burnt all the dry grass they could find in the plain, that their countrymen might be apprized of their return from afar, by means of the smoke. They halted on the borders of a lake a few leagues distant from the colony, and there feasted sumptuously on our oxen, as appeared next day from the bones they had left. Although the enemies were out of sight, my labours were not yet at an end, and after having been fatigued with riding, watching, giving orders, and shedding a quantity of blood from four o'clock in the morning till two in the afternoon, I laid aside my arms for a while, and applied my mind to healing. Whilst an arrow was extracted from an Abipon, who had been wounded in defending his house from the besiegers, the broken point stuck deep in the flesh, and I was called upon by the screams of his wife to apply whatever remedy I judged proper. Having performed this charitable duty, I at length got time to attend to my own cure, to bathe the wound, which had been inflicted ten hours before, with hot wine, and to bind it up. My hand streamed continually with perspiration; from which it may be concluded that wooden arrows contain a sort of poison. In consequence of losing such a quantity of blood, I was tormented with a burning thirst, which the largest draughts of water failed to appease. I do not remember to have tasted a morsel of food the whole day. The pain of my wound, which received hourly augmentation, became perfectly intolerable at night, when I could discover no comfortable position in which to place my arm. A pillow laid underneath it afforded me some relief. The muscle, or more properly, the tendon of the muscle which moves the little finger, had been so dreadfully lacerated, that it swelled like a rope, but was completely cured, at the end of sixteen days, by the nightly application of melted hen's fat. The swelling in the muscle subsided, but I did not recover the use of the finger, which was moved by it, for five months; at the end of which it was healed by a balsam administered by a famous druggist in the town of the Holy Apostles. Even at this day I bear about me a scar, the witness of a signal wound, the monument of my contempt of death, and defence of the colony, and a constant memorial of beloved Paraguay.