182 THE AMAZON AND MADEIRA RIVERS. 
drunkard, who by pitiless oppression of the financially ruined coimtiy 
seemed the means for his life guards — also conceived the idea of 
robbing the churches in the Pueblos on the Mauiore and the Itonama 
for a second time, and of making clean work of it once for all, the Indians 
of Trinidad rose as one man, and obliged the lieutenant and his little 
troop, who had been sent thither for a start under an evidently 
erroneous conception of things, to heat a hasty retreat without fulfilling 
their mission. 
Save these sporadic and, as will he allowed, not very profitable 
interventions on the part of the Supreme Government, the Indians, who 
do not meddle with the regidarly recurring political revolutions, are com- 
pletely abandoned to their own indolence and to the mercy of the 
traders I have already named, upon payment of the annual tax of 
4 pesos, about 20 francs, per head. 
In illustration of the reckless indificrence with which the amplest 
somees of wealth, that might powerfully contribute to the coimtry’s 
future prosperity, are left to ruin, let me give the following narrative : 
On the campos near the Missions there Avere innumerable herds of 
half-wild cattle, the descendants of those bred in the time of the Jesuits, 
and under their iron government so jealously guarded that the Indians 
never dared take more of them than the Padi’es graciously permitted. * 
It was a stock which, though sprung from small beginnings, had in the 
course of two hundred years increased to an immense total ; judicious 
3. General D. Pedro Blanco, murdered 1838. 
4. General D. Andres Santa Cruz. 
5. General D. Jose Miguel de Velasco, died 1860. 
6. General JosS BaUivian, poisoned at Rio de Janeiro 1851 . 
7. General Manoel Isidore Belzu. 
8. General George Cordova, murdered 1861. 
!). Dr. D. Jose Maria Linares, died at Valparaiso 1861. 
10. General Jose Maria Aelia. 
11. General Mariano Melgarejo, murdered 1872. 
12. Dr. A. Morales, assassinated 1873. 
13. Lieutenant-Colonel Adolfo BaUivian, elected 15tli May, 1873. 
Only two of tliese formally surrendered their supreme office to their successors. 
Some were murdered immediately after their fall ; others on their flight, after it ; some 
of them even on neutral territory. 
* According to a tradition still current in the Puehlos, the Jesuits, in order to 
utterly spoil the Indians’ appetite for beef, and to give their newly-imported herds time 
to increase, tried to make them believe that the meat of the horned monsters which had 
come from such a distance was injurious to the red man; and it is added that, b 3 ' 
waj' of emphasising the statement, they were careful to let them have some poisoned 
pieces. Who is not reminded by this of the well-known Jesuitical princijde? 
