In the last fifty years which the Jesuits spent in Paraguay, 18,875 infants were sent to Heaven, having received baptism, and being devoid of reason, and consequently of sin. That you may not think this an exaggeration, I must tell you that in the year 1732 those thirty Guarany towns situated near the Parana and Uruguay contained 141,182 Christians. The repeated ravages of the meazles and small-pox, military expeditions in the Royal Camps against the Portugueze, tumults of war on account of the Guarany Reductions, bloody incursions against the savages, and various diseases, had so diminished the number of inhabitants that, on our return to Europe, we left scarce one hundred thousand Guaranies, though twenty years before the two colonies of Ytatines, St. Joachim, and St. Stanislaus, each containing almost five thousand inhabitants, had been added to the thirty ancient towns. I also find it recorded in my notes that from the year 1747 till the year 1766, 91,520 persons were baptized in those thirty-two Guarany towns. The ten towns of the Chiquitos in the year 1766, contained 23,788 Indians, men and women. All except a few catechumens, who had but lately quitted the woods, were excellent Christians, formidable to their foes, and useful to the Spaniards. The other colonies of various nations founded and governed by us in the province of Chaco were reckoned the same year to contain 5,424 Christians. I am not acquainted with the exact number of Christians in each of these colonies; this only I know that the town of St. Francis Xavier supported about a thousand Christian Mocobios in the year 1766, and that of St. Jeronymo about eight hundred Christian Abipones. The town of St. Ferdinand contained no more than two hundred; the rest of the inhabitants were only catechumens. I do not know the number of Abipones that received baptism in the towns of Concepcion and the Rosary. I have been the more diffuse in this enumeration in order to make you understand how much more successful the priests were amongst the pedestrian than amongst the equestrian nations, the conversion of which was a matter of so much more time and labour, that the progress of Christianity amongst the Abipones, though it did not equal our wishes, exceeded the expectations of the Spaniards. I have given this account of the Abipones with the greatest fidelity possible, though not in the most elegant style. Veracity was more my aim than polished language. The judicious reader will pardon any rusticity of expression in an author who has passed so many years amongst savages in the woods of America. THE END. London: Printed by C. Roworth, Bell-yard, Temple-bar. Transcriber's notes. 1. Variations in hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation have been retained as they were in the original publication.