Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/54

 was granted by the Spanish monarchs to "Adelantados" or private adventurers, men mostly of patrician blood, " as  good gentlemen as the king, but not so rich." This is the romantic period, the childhood of her annals, upon which the historian, like the autobiographer, loves to dwell: no new matter of any interest has, however, of late years, come to light. We still read, in all writers from Robertson to the latest pen, of the misfortunes that befel D. Pedro de Mendoza; of the exploits of his lieutenant, D. Juan de Ayolas, who on August 15th, 1537, founded Asuncion; of the wars, virtues, and fate of Alvar Nuñez (Cabeza de Vaca), against whom his contador, or second in command, the violent and turbulent Felipe Cáceres, rebelled; of the conquest of D. Domingo Martinez de Irala, who settled the colony; of the subjugation of the Guaranis by the Captain Francisco Ortiz de Vergara, for whom the audience of Lima substituted D. Juan Ortiz de Zarate; of the lieutenant-governorship of the double-dyed rebel Felipe Cáceres, who had again revolted against Vergara, and who expiated his offences by imprisonment and deportation to Spain; and lastly, of the chivalrous career of the valiant Biscayan, D. Juan de Garay, who after conquering and settling an extensive province perished miserably (1581) by the hands of the ignoble Minuano, savages. Thus by conquest and violence arose a state which was doomed to fall, in the fulness of time, bathed in its own blood.

As early as 1555 Asuncion became the seat of the first diocess: its juniors were Tucuman, originally established at Santiago-del-Estero, and transported to Córdoba in 1700; Buenos Aires, founded in 1620; and lastly Salta, in 1735. From the beginning, as in the days of Dr. Francia and