few men had greater influence with them. He, however, was not a Spaniard, but came of a milder and more civilised race. Las Casas spent his life in pleading for the miserable Indians, both in his diocese of Chiapa and throughout the Indies. He, again, was a Churchman, though on occasions even Churchmen did not disdain to participate in the benefits of a Mitayo and Yanancona. Neither Columbus nor Las Casas had ever been prisoners to the Indians, as Alvar Nuñez had been. Captivity, though it may occasionally chasten, is seldom known to sweeten the spirit of the captive, at least towards his captors. However, Alvar Nuñez never avenged himself upon the Indians for the long years of slavery in Florida, but, on the contrary, treated them with unvarying kindness.

Who so fit as he to rescue an expedition which had failed and of which the survivors were in extremity of hunger? Had he not himself suffered almost everything a man could suffer?

Having sailed in 1527 with the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez to Apalache in Florida, he had been shipwrecked, voyaged in boats, cast without clothes and only four companions, likewise naked, on an unknown shore. Enslaved by the Indians, risen to be a peddler, then a doctor, lastly a sacred chief, he had seen the ‘rabbits, hares, lions, bears and other savage beasts which roam the woods of Florida,' observed and written of (for the first time) 'the opossum, a wondrous animal which carries its young in a pouch after they are born, had marked the birds, as ducks, and royal ducks, swans, falcons, herons, kingfishers, pelicans, flamingoes, and others which are unknown in the Castilles.'

Had he not with the other castaways fashioned a boat with tools made out of spurs and stirrups, bits and swords, furnished it with ropes made from the tails and manes of the horses of the expedition, and sailed for weeks in it, only to fall again into the Indians' power? At last had he not made his way into New Spain, not as a captive but leading hundreds of Indians, and, encountering a Spanish horse soldier, found he had almost forgotten Spanish, and was received as one long dead and risen by a miracle? Was not his first thought to entreat the Spaniards not to harm the Indians he had brought with him, and to beseech the Indians to leave their marching life and

cultivate the soil?

All this

he tells us modestly and with excuses (as every now and then 'me pesa hablar de mis trabajos '), and as befits a gentleman. Lastly, he leaves the reader by informing him, quite quietly and without comment, that God was pleased to save from all these perils himself, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes, and that the fourth was called Estevanico, a Moor, native of Azimur.

4 Yananconas were a sort of grant of Indians who, according to Herrera in his Historia General de las Indias (decad v. lib. iv. cap. 40), were condemned to perpetual

slavery. Mitayos

number of days' service a week. were a kind of feudal fief, the Indians of which gave a certain

Therefore, being who he was, the king did well to take a certain 'asiento,' and 'capitulacion,' with Alvar Nuñez,6 and to make him Governor and Adelantado of the Rio de la Plata and General both of its fleets and armies. All on condition that he should furnish 8,000 arms, ships, provisions, men and all things requisite. So on the 2nd of November (1537) he embarked at Cadiz with his fleet of two ships and a caravel,

ducats, with horses,

all very well provisioned and equipped. One ship was new, and measured three hundred and fifty tons, the other one hundred and fifty, and the caravel but fifty. In these were packed four hundred soldiers and thirty horses. All went well up to the Cape de Verdes. From thence to the equator, where it occurred to the 'Maestro del agua,' who was in the flagship, to examine his stock of water; and out of one hundred pipes which had been put aboard he found but three remaining, and from these the thirty horses and four hundred soldiers had to drink. Seeing the greatness of the necessity, the Governor-for Alvar Nuñez almost always speaks of himself in the third person-gave orders that the fleet should make for land. Three days we sailed in search of it, and on the fourth, an hour before the sunrise, occurred a very notable affair, and as it is not altogether 'fuera de proposito,' ,' I set it down; and it is this-that, going towards the land, the ships had almost touched on some sharp rocks we had not seen.

Then as now, I take it, vigilance was not a quality to be found in Spanish sailors when on watch. It is probable that, like the sentinels I remember in my youth who sat on wharves to guard the ocean, fishing with a pin tied to their bayonets, or slept under a tent fashioned with a rifle and a greatcoat, the look-out was sleeping like a dormouse. However, had he been awake and cried out 'Helms a' lee,' or 'Hard a' port,' the 'notable occurrence' had not happened. Just as the vessels were almost on the rocks,

a cricket commenced to sing, which cricket a sick soldier had put into the ship at Cadiz, being anxious to hear its music; and for the two months which our navigation had endured no one had heard it, whereat the soldier was much enraged; and as that morning it felt the land (sintió la tierra) it commenced to sing, and its music wakened all the people of the ship, who saw the cliffs, which were distant almost a cross-bow shot from where we were, so we cast out anchors and saved the ships; and it is certain that if the cricket had not sung, all of us four hundred soldiers and thirty horses had been lost.

Some of the crew and soldiers accepted the occurrence as a miracle from God, but Nuñez himself is silent on this head, being a better observer of natural history than a theologian.

But, from then and sailing more than a hundred leagues along the coast, always every evening the cricket gave us his music, and

5Asiento' is a contract. The contract which Charles the Fifth, at the wellmeant but unfortunate instigation of Las Casas, made with the Genoese to supply negroes for America is known as 'El Asiento de los Negros.'

In the capitulacion ' occurs the celebrated clause, 'Que no pasasen procuradores ni abogados á las Indias,' that neither solicitors nor barristers should pass to the Indies. It is unfortunate it was not persevered in, as in Paraguay at least the Reptilia were well represented already.

thus with it we arrived at a little port beyond Cape Frio, where the Adelantado landed and unfurled his flag, and took possession for his Majesty.'

In

If the parallel between the conquest of America and that now going on in Africa exists, the manner of it is somewhat different. both cases the result is the degradation of the natives and the forcible engrafting of the true faith on the unbelievers; but fewer perils exist to-day by land or even at sea by negligence of the 'Maestro del Agua;' no miracles and certainly no crickets are put aboard the ocean tramps' which carry the conquerors, to wile away the hours for ailing soldiers. Better guns no doubt, less superstition— that is, in religion, for the economic superstition is just as crass as ever was the folly of theologians—and a shorter voyage and still the questions, whether or no the thing is right, and if the natives (always excepting the acquisition of the true faith) are going to be the gainers.

After having taken possession for his most Catholic Majesty, the expedition disembarked at Santa Catalina in Brazil. There the Governor landed his men and twenty-six of the horses which had escaped the sea, all that remained of forty-six embarked in Spain.' Besides the alarums and excursions incidental to the landing in a new country, the odium theologicum gave the Governor some work at once. Two friars, Fray Bernardo de Armenta and Fray Alonso Lebron, Franciscans, had burnt the houses of some Indians, who had retaliated (in the heathen manner) by slaughtering two Christians, and ‘the people were scandalised.'

In Africa to-day, when, either to open markets, take away men's wives, or force the people to change their superstitions, they burn a house or two (or even a villlage), the unnatural barbarians retort by murdering a vicarious Christian. The difference is that nowadays Christian shoots a chief or two and puts the whole affair (distorted) in a newspaper, the Spanish conquerors generally shot and left the bodies for the wolves, and went to Mass. However,

whereas the

Alvar Nuñez

sent for the friars, admonished them, and told them

that their duty was to try and teach the Indians better ways of life. This was the first false step he made, and set all friars and priests throughout America against him.

Hearing

at Santa Catalina that Buenos Ayres was almost abandoned, and that the greater portion of its inhabitants had founded the town of Asunción del Paraguay, Alvar determined to proceed with the soldiers and horses by land and send the vessels Plate and up the Paraguay. This he resolved to do

into the river

to avoid the stormy voyage down the coast. The two Franciscan

friars he told

to remain and indoctrinate' the Indians; but they

refused to do so, giving as their excuse that they wished to reside in Asunción amongst the Spaniards. Had they been Jesuits, it is ten to

one they had remained to 'indoctrinate.' The Jesuits alone of the religious orders were ever ready to take all risks.

In the last century, in South America, there was a saying, 'Los Jesuitas van á una, los demas á uña,' meaning that the Jesuits had one aim (i.e. to Christianise the Indians), and the others were there to catch at everything.

6

So on the 2nd of November, 1541, the Governor began his march of something like two thousand miles through an unknown country accompanied by two hundred musqueteers and thirty crossbowmen, and all the horses which had escaped the sea.' In nineteen days he came across the Guaranís, a race of Indians who eat human flesh, not alone of Indians [that would be a venal crime], but also of Christians.'

It is curious that both Alvar Nuñez, Hulderico Schmidel, Barco de la Centenera, Padres Montoya and Losano, and almost all the first conquistadores of the Rivers Plate and Paraguay, concur in saying the Guaranís were cannibals. One would have thought it was a thing not easy to make a mistake about. Still Felix de Azara, writing in 1796, and many other moderns maintain it was untrue.

7

This but confirms a favourite theory I hold to the effect that common-sense with apprehension, power of observation, and even eyesight, were vouchsafed to man no earlier than the middle of the last century.

Leaving these cannibals, or pseudo-cannibals, the Governor advanced to the Rio Iguaçu, where the 'pilots' took an altitude. Pilots always accompanied a Spanish army in America in those days, and seem to have been at least as useful as the modern reporter, who in three lines reports the actions of the army and devotes a column to describe the way he rode to reach the telegraph.

'It was a thing to see, how frightened the Indians were of the horses and how they brought them abundance of provisions, chickens and honey, to keep them quiet and in good humour, and they asked the Governor to tell the horses not to hurt them.'

Perhaps, upon reflection, Don Felix de Azara was in the right, and the Guaranís could never have been cannibals; the description of their terror of the horses and efforts at propitiation savours too much of Arcady. Still, after all, a cannibal who eats an ox is little better than a cannibal who eats a man, the difference seeming to consist in the fact that the four-legged animal cannot (at present) ride a bicycle.

Contrary to all good policy and precedent, the Governor (like Christopher Columbus) ordered that nothing should be taken from the Indians without due payment. To insure this being done, he

Azara, Descripcion y Historia del Paraguay, vol. i. Also Dean Funes in his History of the Independence of Buenos Aires.

paid for everything himself, and served it out to the soldiery. Fault number two. First having put the friars against him, he now must make his soldiers discontented. In European wars, when, even in the days of Charles the Fifth, Chapin Vitelli, and Pescara, some sort of fitful, undersized gazette appeared at intervals, or when at least there was a chance of history taking notice of the affair, it was advisable to hang a thieving soldier now and then to teach the others not to poach upon the General's perquisites; but in America, when the enemies were Indians, nothing more absurd than talk of payment. Payment is fitting for men of a (the) superior race. Honour, a fiction to be attended to between the peoples whose governments own navies. But 'niggers,' Indians, or even the Latin races and those who use inferior kinds of rifles, are in another category. For them cases of gin and Bibles. Surely Alvar Nuñez might have known that Pizarro, Cortés, Almagro, and the rest were men who never paid for anything. He, though, persisted in his folly to the end, and so brought ruin on himself. Still the Indians seemed to appreciate his conduct, for he says that 'when the news was spread abroad of the good treatment the Governor gave to all, they came to meet the army covered with flowers and bringing provisions in great abundance.'

8

After passing the Iguaçu the march continued for several days through a country 'full of game and plentiful in fruits.' Here the two friars went on ahead to collect provisions, and when the Governor arrived the Indians had no more to give. Perhaps the first historical account of the collection of the tithes in South America.

So, passing the Parana and many towns of Guaranís, they came at last to Asuncion on the 2nd of March, 1542, having only lost one man, and accomplished the longest march that any one had hitherto achieved pacifically in North or South America.

Hardly arrived at Asuncion, Alvar Nuñez found himself embroiled on every side. The Indians were in open rebellion, the settlement of Buenos Ayres almost in ruins, and the officers appointed by the king to collect the royal dues badly disposed towards him. After having commanded the clergy to ascertain from them if it was lawful to attack the Guaycurús who had assailed the recently established

missions, and

received the answer that it was not only lawful but

expedient, he despatched a force against them, to which was joined a priest, to require the Guaycurús to become Christians and acknowledge the King of Spain.

Quite naturally the propositions seemed unreasonable to the poor Indians, who probably had never heard before either of Christianity

or the King

of Spain. The Governor was not satisfied with the

Where Alvar Nuñez passed the Iguaçu is not clear, as the 'pilots' have left no recorded altitude, but it was not improbably somewhere in what is now the Brazilian province of Missiones, and possibly at Candelaria, which is the safest place for

the passage of an army.