Nor is it sufficient to satisfy the Abipones in the article of food; whatever they took it into their heads to wish for, though perhaps it could not be found in any shop at Amsterdam, they used to require at our hands, and that not in a supplicatory, but an imperative tone. Day and night they trod our threshold in crowds, and wearied our ears with the constant repetition of "Father, give me a hat, a knife, an axe, a ring, glass-beads, salt, tobacco, &c." If to any of their requests you reply, though with great mildness and the most perfect sincerity, that you are not in possession of the thing in question, they will rudely accuse you of stinginess and falsehood—nay, I have sometimes heard worse. One of the older Abipones, not a bad man in other respects, desired me, in an imperious manner, to furnish him with a knife; I gently replied, that I had none just then, but would give him one as soon as the expected supply arrived from the city. "If I were to meet you in the field with this lance," rejoined he, smiling, and taking up a lance that was lying near, "you would hardly dare to tell me that you had not a knife." These perpetual and unreasonable requests of the Abipones are not however to be wondered at. Poverty rendered them importunate, arrogance, bold. Now learn from whence this arrogance proceeded. They knew that they were feared by the Spaniards. The slaughters which they had perpetrated, the terror which for many years they had spread throughout the whole province, the victories which they had gained, were yet fresh in their memory. They spoke of it as of a favour extorted from them by the prayers and promises of the Governors, that they had laid aside arms for a while, to settle in a wretched colony, and insisted upon it that the advantages resulting from this measure were entirely on the side of the Spaniards. At every refusal which our poverty compelled us to make them, they complained that they were richer and happier whilst at enmity with the Spaniards, than now that they were their friends. "Alas! how senseless were our chiefs and old men," said the Abiponian youths, full of discontent, and panting for plunder, "in granting peace to the Spaniards! Here we are forced to pine miserable and inglorious in this little town; whereas formerly, by plundering estates, or merchants' waggons, we furnished ourselves with enough to last many months, more than we can now obtain either by entreaty or artifice." Mindful of former booties, they thought they were imposing great obligations on the Spaniards when they remained quietly in a colony, and ceased to rob, burn, and murder, and looked upon every instance of liberality in their former adversaries as a small return for their own concession of peace.