H.—ANTHROPOLOGY 163 
Peru. And is near coming over into Europe; this Herb of Paraguay 
being valued amongst the precious commodities of America. At first 
the Spaniards were well pleas’d with their cotton garments and liquor 
made of honey. But afterwards, trade enhancing the value of this herb, 
covetousness and luxury encreas’d, to feed both which the Indians began 
to be enslav’d to make this powder. Labour made their numbers 
decrease, and that made the Spaniards poor again ; to show us that very 
often the same methods we take to gather wealth serve to impoverish us.’ 
The two quotations given above are couched in rather harsh terms in 
regard to the excessive use of the ilex; but the same could be written 
of tea, or any infusion, or of alcoholic drinks if taken in excess. However, 
Southey, writing in 1817, avers that over-indulgence has been known to 
result in almost total mental aberration, lasting over many days; and 
the danger of serious infection, owing to the use of a common bombilla, 
which passes from lip to lip, is emphasised by many writers. Demersay 
adds that the constant imbibing of hot matzé, alternating with draughts of 
cold water, is bad for the teeth, and suggests that the use of a silver 
bombilla, which can become unbearably hot, may cause cancer in the lip. 
As regards the properties of the ilex, which have won for it so wide- 
spread a popularity, authorities are not quite in accord. Christy (1880) 
states that the leaf contains ‘ the same active property as tea or coffee, in 
a proportion (nearly 2 per cent.)intermediate between the two; a volatile 
oil; 16 per cent. of an astringent principle ; and about to per cent. of a 
nutritious gluten, only a portion of which is dissolved in the infusion. 
He states further that the full benefit of the leaf is only obtained when 
it is chewed. 
The Handbook of Paraguay (1894) gives the analysis as 0-45 caffeine, 
20-88 caffeo-tannic acid, an aromatic oil, gluten, and a proportion of 
theine. However, we may conclude that the action of the infusion 
would be that of a cardiac and a nutritive, while the relatively small 
proportion of tannin would render it more digestible than tea. It is, 
perhaps, a little strange that the earliest authors who record its use, 
Duran (1626-27), Leon Pinelo (1636) and del Techo (1649-72), quote 
it primarily as an emetic. 
To leave aside for the moment the question of the actual discovery 
of the properties of yerba maté, the initial exploitation of the ‘ tea’ was 
undoubtedly due to the Jesuit missionaries. ‘The first Jesuit reservation 
was founded in 1609, the last in 1760, and the Jesuits were expelled in 
1774. ‘The missionaries encouraged the use of the leaf among their 
Indians, to whom it was served out with other rations; and Endlicher 
and Martius state that this was done to wean the natives from over- 
indulgence in fermented drinks. But there is no doubt that the revenues 
derived from the trade in the leaf became indispensable to these self- 
supporting communities, whose establishment is one of the most remark- 
able developments in the world’s history. On the expulsion of the 
Jesuits their mission houses and lands became Crown property, and the 
maté industry had become so prosperous that, in 1807, the profits derived 
from it were reckoned at £100,000 annually. 
Long before this, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the leaf 
