THE GENTE RATIONALE. 97 



escape, that their submission is involuntary ; 

 but the soldiers, as I have before observed, 

 generally hunt them from their place of refuge, 

 and bring them back to undergo the severe 

 punishment their trangression has incurred. To 

 the most stupid apathy, then, must the patience 

 of these Indians be ascribed ; and in this, their 

 distinguishing characteristic, they exceed every 

 race of men I have ever known, not excepting 

 the degraded natives of Terra del Fuego, or 

 Van Piemen s Land. 



The Christian religion, or what the monks 

 are pleased to call by that name, has given no 

 beneficial spur to their minds. How indeed 

 could it act upon their confined understandings, 

 when their teachers were almost wholly defi 

 cient in the necessary means of communicating 

 knowledge, an acquaintance with their lan 

 guage ? I have since had opportunities of 

 observing the free Indians, who appear less 

 stupid, and in many respects more civilized, 

 than the proselytes of the gente rationale, as 

 the Spaniards here call themselves; and I am 

 convinced that the system of instruction and 

 discipline adopted by the monks, has certainly 



VOL. II. F 



