I beg to state that I was wrong in attributing bad intentions to the poor Indian, and that my precautions were unnecessary. Don Torribio and don Zeno Cabral had said the truth; the rude correction inflicted on my Guaranis had had the most salutary influence on him, and had entirely modified his intentions towards me. He became more lively, more amiable, and especially more of a talker; I took advantage of this change in his disposition to sound him with regard to don Zeno Cabral. This time also I completely failed, not because the Indian refused to answer me, but on account of his ignorance. In a few words, this is all I succeeded in learning. Don Zeno Cabral was well known, and especially much feared by all the Indians who live on the desert, and who unceasingly traverse it in every direction. He was to them a strange, mysterious, incomprehensible being, whose power was very great. No one knew his regular abode; he almost possessed the attribute of ubiquity, for he had been seen at distances far removed from each other almost at the same time; the Indians had often laid traps to kill him without ever having succeeded in inflicting on him the slightest wound. He often disappeared for months together without their knowing what had become of him, then they saw him suddenly camped in their midst without their knowing how he had arrived there. On the whole, the Indians, apart from the respectful fear he had inspired in them, for the most part were much indebted to him; no one better than he knew how to cure those maladies supposed to be incurable by their sorcerers. This information, if I can so call the timid and superstitious ramblings of my guide, left me more perplexed than I was before with regard to this man, whom everything tended to surround in my eyes with a mysterious halo. A word uttered, perhaps, by chance by the Indian aroused still more my insatiable curiosity. "He is a Paulista," he said to me, in a subdued voice, looking cautiously around him, as if he feared that this word might fall upon an indiscreet ear. On several occasions during my stay at Buenos Aires, I had heard of the Paulistas: the information which had been given me with regard to them, although for the most part very incomplete and erroneous, had, however, greatly excited my curiosity. The Paulistas, or Vicentistas, for these two names are indifferently applied to the early historians, first settled in the vast and magnificent plains of Piratininga. There was then organised under the intelligent and paternal direction of the two Jesuits, Antieta and Nobrega, a colony within a colony--a sort of half barbarous metropolis, which owes to its courage a continually increasing prosperity and influence, and the exploits of which if some day they are related, will form, I am convinced, a most interesting chapter in the history of Brazil.