There is a long list of great sertanistas. It includes many names well known in Brazil today—Martins, Soares, de Souza, Barreto, Tourinho, Sá, Leme, Paes, Almeida, Dias, Ribeiro, Carvalho, Rodrigues, and a host of others; few men escaped the lure of the sertão, and some leave stories which are the Iliads of Brazil, putting these among the great adventures of all time. There is for instance Antonio Raposo, who headed a bandeira which left S. Paulo in 1628, and which was “the biggest and most devastating known.” Three thousand people composed the expedition, and its main object was the destruction of the Jesuit missions on the Paraná river, near Ciudad Real. One by one the missions, which had grown into thriving industrial communities, were attacked, besieged, and smashed; as they fell, escaping brothers or converts carried the warning to other convents, stiff fights were made, and in some cases long resistance was maintained. But in the end the Jesuits were broken and dispersed, and the bandeirantes went back to S. Paulo with thousands of Indian slaves. The courageous Jesuits went deeper into the interior, collected such remnants as they could of their property and their protégés, and began the work again. Raposo, years afterwards, made another journey which brought him into fame as a legendary hero; he crossed the Paulista sertão by Tibagy, thence traversed the heart of Brazil from south-east to north-west, entered Peru, scaling the Andes, crossed to the Pacific and waded into those waters sword in hand; returning, he discovered the headwaters of the Amazon, sailed down it, and when at last after years of travel he came back to São Paulo no one recognized him. A magnificent figure among indomitable bandeirantes is that of Fernão Dias de Paes Leme. Well may the wild sertão be haunted by the shade of such a man as this, or of his lieutenant, Borba Gato, or that father and son who were known among the Indians of Govaz as Old Devil the First and Old Devil the Second. Fernão Dias, the “Hercules of the Sertão,” was the discoverer of the emerald mines of Sumidouro, after ten years spent in search. He was a famous slave-chaser of the sixteen hundreds, an extremely religious man whose zeal was only assuaged by much building of chapels and convents with the money earned in long raids; practical, astute, suave, he won his ends by tact rather than violence, among his exploits being that of leading the whole of the allied Goyana tribes to São Paulo. Approaching their territory Dias made no threats, but camped nearby, cultivated fields of cereals and vegetables, and so ingratiated himself into the confidence of Tombu the chief that one day the old Indian collected his people and agreed to go to the pleasant lands of which the Paulista spoke. Five thousand natives thus marched voluntarily into captivity; Tombu remained the worshipper of Fernão Dias until his death, but with the exception of runaways none of the Goyanas ever saw the sertão again.