UP THE PARAGUAY 43 



member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, 

 and unless the attacked animal can immediately make its 

 escape from the water it is devoured alive. Here on the 

 Paraguay the natives hold them in much respect, whereas 

 the caymans are not feared at all. The only redeeming 

 feature about them is that they are themselves fairly good 

 to eat, although with too many bones. 



At daybreak of the third day, rinding we were still 

 moored off Concepcion, we were rowed ashore and strolled 

 off through the streets of the quaint, picturesque old town; 

 a town which, like Asuncion, was founded by the con- 

 quistadores three-quarters of a century before our own En- 

 glish and Dutch forefathers landed in what is now the 

 United States. The Jesuits then took practically complete 

 possession of what is now Paraguay, controlling and Chris- 

 tianizing the Indians, and raising their flourishing missions 

 to a pitch of prosperity they never elsewhere achieved. 

 They were expelled by the civil authorities (backed by the 

 other representatives of ecclesiastical authority) some fifty 

 years before Spanish South America became independent. 

 But they had already made the language of the Indians, 

 Guarany, a culture-tongue, reducing it to writing, and 

 printing religious books in it. Guarany is one of the most 

 wide-spread of the Indian tongues, being originally found 

 in various closely allied forms not only in Paraguay but 

 in Uruguay and over the major part of Brazil. It remains 

 here and there, as a lingua geral at least, and doubtless in 

 cases as an original tongue, among the wild tribes. In most 

 of Brazil, as around Para and around Sao Paulo, it has 

 left its traces in place-names, but has been completely 

 superseded as a language by Portuguese. In Paraguay 



