THE FALLS OF GUAYRA. 
79 
followed up many leagues into the interior of 
Brazil. But the savage and intractable Falls 
bar the door to all but a handful. The Jesuit 
Father, Montoya, sought to navigate them in 
1631 when he led his huge flock of Indian 
converts from the settlement at Guayra. The 
fierce half-breed Paulistas from Brazil, called 
‘Mamelucos,’ had harried and plundered the 
town time and time again, carrying off the 
Indians to slavery in San Paulo. And at last 
Montoya decided to leave the settlement, and 
lead his flock to a place of safety further down 
the river. He had hoped to escape by river, and 
had a fleet of rafts sent over the falls to test 
them. Not one escaped. And so he made his 
wonderful pilgrimage five hundred miles 
through the trackless forest, and settled his 
Indians at Iguazii and at Loreto and at San 
Ignacio. 
The only traces that now remain of the 
Jesuits’ occupation are a few ruins fast 
crumbling to decay, whilst the melodious names 
of the towns they founded still wake memories 
of those far off days. 
Such are the Falls, untouched by man. 
Untouched, however, they will not long remain. 
We heard talk of an engineer prospecting for 
the Brazilian Government, and of other schemes 
also. The railway too from San Paulo is 
creeping down the Parand : year by year it gets 
nearer the Falls, and before long Messrs. Cook 
