"413. The very reverend father, Gaspar de San Agustin, an Augustinian and a native of Madrid, with the practical experience of forty years of life among those people, confesses, in a letter which he wrote concerning their characteristics--and which although in manuscript, deserves to be printed, for he understood those natives as far as it is possible to comprehend them--that it is so difficult to describe their characteristics that it would be more easy to define the formal object in logic; more feasible to compute the square of a circle; more discoverable to assign a fixed rule for the measurement of the degrees of longitude on the globe; and after the four knowledges of Solomon could be placed this fifth, as impossible. [94] In fact, after so many years, he says that he has only been able to understand that _quadraginta annis proximus fui Generationi huic, & dixi: semper hi erant corde_. [95] He speaks at length and from experience and with remarkable detail. Although the letter is worth printing, my lack of space does not allow me to copy it. [96] "414. Granting, then, as true the experiences that he writes, and reducing them to a brief summary I assert that _the character of these Indians is a maze of contradictions and oppositions_; and I believe that this is not the worst of the descriptions. For they are at once proud and humble; bold in wickedness, and pusillanimous cowards; compassionate and cruel; negligent and lazy; but for their own affairs, whether evil or good, careful and watchful; easily credulous, but incapable of understanding, and fickle, after so oft repeated sacred teachings. They are very much inclined to attend the church, and its feasts and solemn rites, but it is necessary to oblige them by the rigor of the lash to attend mass on the prescribed days, and confession and communion when holy Church orders; and are very reverent toward the ministering fathers because of the superiority that they recognize in them, while at the same time they mock them, murmur against them, and even deceive them. Consequently, a religious called them jokingly 'the schoolchildren of St. Casiano;' [97] for it is a fact that they go astray in all their resolutions without the government of the fathers, and it is necessary to treat them like schoolchildren in their instruction." [Here we resume the narrative of Le Gentil, who italicises the words, "It is necessary to employ the lash in order to get them to attend mass on the prescribed days when holy Church orders it, and to treat them as schoolchildren," and continues:]