JESUIT MISSIONS. 705 



a plundering expedition, and it is concluded, they separate 

 into their original tribes, each taking opposite directions with 

 their share of the plunder, to escape the risk of being- captured. 

 A considerable portion of the almost unexplored district — the 

 Gran Chaco — which they inhabit is a dreary waste of lagoons 

 and marshes, traversed by rapid, muddy, and tortuous rivers. 



JESUIT MISSIONS. 



The missions established by the Jesuits show the impotence 

 of their system for the civilization of the wild man. The ter- 

 ritory where they carried on their chief labours exists on the 

 eastern bank of the Parana, to the north of Uruguay and 

 Corrientes, bordering on the Brazilian territory. After three 

 hundred years of labour, they left these savages utterly incap- 

 able of self-government. 



"The Indian mind, indeed," observes Captain Page — an 

 American — "laying aside its atrocities, has never emerged 

 from the intellectual development of childhood. These savages 

 showed the imitative faculties of the animal. When taught, 

 they delved and ploughed, planted cotton and sugar-cane, and 

 executed work in carpentry and wove fabrics, and performed 

 other manual operations ; yet their reason and intelligence has 

 not advanced, even pari passu in any degree with the progress 

 of European civilization ; nor have the natures of their female 

 population become modified with the slightest trait of the 

 humanities and tendernesses which are the brightest attributes 

 of the women of the present century." " Among the Jesuit 

 missions in the Gran Chaco," observes another writer, " are 

 found no remaining evidence of better knowledge, than that 

 the Indians now prefer horse-flesh to any other kind of 

 meat." 



(379) 45 



