"It was in these pastoral and agricultural pursuits that the main supply of Guaraní labour was employed. The Jesuits saw to it that the tasks of the Indians were made as attractive as possible. Thus they would march to the fields singing chants and preceded by a small band of instruments, and they would return in the same impressive fashion when the labours of the day were done. In all such ways as this the work of the Indians was lightened, and undoubtedly the policy possessed its practical side in that far more satisfactory agricultural results were obtained from these contented people than would have been the case had they been dejected and apathetic. "The scope of the mission work, however, was by no means confined to the pastoral and agricultural pursuits. The community was entirely self-supporting, and it was thus necessary to quarry the stone of which the town buildings were constructed, to build the small vessels in which much of the produce was sent to be sold in the large cities lower down the river, and even to found the cannons and to produce the gunpowder which were necessary in order to defend the settlements from the slave-raiding attacks of those arch-enemies of the missions, the _Mamelucos_, who came out with fire and sword from the Brazilian town of San Paolo. "But, when the disposition and attainments of the original Guaraní tribe are taken into consideration, some of the most remarkable achievements of the missionaries were in connection with the finer arts and crafts rather than with the cruder labours of the main industries. It is true that at the head of each of these branches was a Jesuit who was a complete master of his particular art or craft. But this alone does not suffice to explain the astonishing progress made in these directions by a race that a generation or two before had represented one of the most primitive types of Indian in the world--naked savages without the faculty of hieroglyphics, unable to count beyond the few first numbers, ignorant of the very rudiments of music, and lacking sufficient imagination to provide themselves even with a reasonable supply of that superstition which stands for the religion of the savage.