Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/56

 vated maize and sweet potato, tobacco and cotton, and they had none of the headstrong independence that characterizes the Gaucho or mixed breed. Philip III. having, by his decree of 1606, approved of the project to propagate the faith, allowed two Italians, Simoni Mazeta and Giuseppe Cataldino to set out (December 8, 1609) en route for the colony of La Guayra, where some Spaniards had settled and had laid the foundations of future empire. The Jesuits began to form their rival government in the regions to the east and south-east of the actual republic, the fertile valleys of the Rivers Paraná and Uruguay; and between 1685 and 1760 they established the Misiones or Reductions of Paraguay. The whole Guarani Republic, for it might so be called, contained thirty-three Pueblos or towns. Of these, seven, now hopelessly ruined, lay on the left bank of the Uruguay River; fifteen, also destroyed, were in the modern provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios; and eleven, of which remnants of church or chapel still exist, were in Paraguay Proper, that is to say, north of the Great River. These thirty-three Reductions numbered at one time 100,000 souls and 743,608 head of cattle.

It is a popular error to suppose that all Paraguay was occupied by the Jesuits; their theocracy extended over but a small portion of the modern Republic; on the other hand their influence flew far and wide. In the west and about Asuncion was the civil government, one of pure immobility as regards progress, and occupied only by contemptible wars, civil and foreign. The clergy was in the last stage of corruption and ignorance, except when its own interests were concerned. New Spain alone numbered 15,000 priests. About 1649 South America supported 840 monkeries with enormous estates: a will that left nothing to a religious house was held an irreligious act in those days, and even now the prejudice is not quite obsolete. Moreover, every