In each of the colonies beef was distributed amongst the inhabitants at stated hours of almost every day; but by reason of the poverty of the pastures it was often lean, often insufficient, and sometimes (which however happened but seldom) there was none at all: for where could the Missionary get beef if he wanted oxen, and if the Spaniards were as slow and niggardly in supplying the colonies of the savages, as they had been forward in founding them? They were extremely solicitous that the Abipones and Mocobios should be tamed like wild beasts, and guarded in the towns from slaying the Spaniards, but took very little care to prevent them from dying of hunger. In the towns of St. Jeronymo and St. Ferdinand, the estates were sometimes reduced to such a wretched condition that, having nothing left for their support, the Abipones with their families were forced to go out into the neighbouring plains for the sake of hunting. After they had been two or three months absent, the fields which our entreaties had prevailed with them to plough, were covered with tares or browsed on by beasts, and the loss of the expected harvest induced a necessity either of roving or starving; a very pernicious alternative: for in repeated wanderings, often of many weeks, civilization and the knowledge of the rudiments of religion, so laboriously instilled into them, were forgotten, and they gradually relapsed into their former barbarism. The deficiency of sheep and oxen was certainly the chief cause which retarded the progress of Christianity in these colonies. If, according to St. Paul, amongst other nations faith enters by the ear, with the savages of Paraguay it can only be thrust in by the mouth. Hence our anxiety lest cattle should fail us; hence our grief to find that they could so seldom be obtained or preserved.