Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/64

 The second is the secret working by the Missioners of gold mines—a subject kept in the profoundest obscurity. A host of writers, the latest being M. Demersay, doubts their very existence, and makes the precious metals an extract of agriculture. But their opinions are of little value in the presence of earlier authors; for instance, of "Mr. R. M."' (" A Relation of a Voyage to Buenos Ayres, 1716"), who declares that the Misiones had gold diggings, and of Mr. Davie, (" Letters from Paraguay"), who, travelling in 1796-1798, asserts that the Fathers of the Reductions had 80,000 to 100,000 disciplined troops to defend their mines. The latter author saw pure gold collected from the banks of the Uruguay, upon which, we may remember, were seven of the thirty Missions. He imprudently travelled through the old Missions in a semi-clerical disguise, and he suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace. I have myself handled a lump of virgin silver from the Highlands of Corrientes, known as the Sierra de las Misiones; and a French painter at S. Paulo, who was also aware of its existence, proposed to exploit the diggings, setting out from Brazilian Rio Grande do Sul with an armed party strong enough to beat off hostile " Indians."

The Jesuits, it may be remembered, were almost all foreigners—Italians and French, Germans and Portuguese, English and Irish. Their communistic system, their gold, and their troops at last seriously alarmed the Spanish monarchy. Men had heard of Nicholas Neengiru, "King Nicholas of Paraguay;" and a proverb-loving race quoted the saying, " La mentira es hija de Algo." By his decree of April 27, 1767, issued some 220 years after the Jesuits had landed upon the shores of South America,