fully and most meritoriously directed. The Jesuits were an order of men of whom, considering them at different times and in different countries, it would hardly be possible to speak worse or better than they deserved, so heinous were their misdeeds, and so great were their virtues. In one respect their history resembles that of their founder. Ignatius Loyola is perhaps of all the remarkable men whose lives have been largely recorded, the one who displayed most ability in discovering his own deficiencies, and most perseverance in correcting them: thus by the rare union of unwearied patience and consummate prudence, with perfect enthusiasm, he accomplished the object of his ambition, and lived to see a wider success than his boldest hopes could have anticipated. Something of this virtue descended to his followers: as he had amended his defects, so they cast the slough of their offences, abstained from treasons and rebellions, and gradually ceased to invent monstrous legends for imposing upon mankind. The reports of our own missionaries are not more free from falsehood and intentional deception than the publications of the last of the Jesuits, and they are not so free from alloy. These publications, the legacy which the last members of this company bequeathed to the world, form a larger and more valuable addition to the history of America (taking history in its widest acceptation) than had been made since the first discovery and conquest. Of these, Clavigero's History of Mexico is the one which is most known in this country; but the work before us is that which contains the most original and curious information. Perhaps there is no other which gives so full and picturesque an account of savage life; it has a liveliness, an originality, a freshness which makes even garrulity attractive. The good old man, well knowing that the knowledge which he had so painfully acquired was well worthy of preservation, delivers it with an honest confidence that he is addressing a benevolent reader, who, like Maria Theresa, will smile at his jests, listen with sympathizing good nature to the recital of his privations and hardships, and like him for the dangers he had past, and for the cheerfulness which had borne him through. The book however is not a relation of his personal adventures : he has given it a more methodical and regular form. The first volume is filled with a preliminary account of Paraguay-(Liber prodromus de Paraquaria Habitu.) Under that name he includes the whole province of La Plata, and enters largely into its natural history, and the transactions of his own times, particularly the war of the Seven Reductions, and the calumnies and falsehoods which prepared the way for the expulsion of the Jesuits, and the total overthrow of their famous establishments in Paraguay. The second volume relates to the manners and customs of the Abipones; and and the third to their history, and that of the attempts to civilize them in which he was engaged. The translator has, not injudiciously, curtailed the work by omitting controversial parts in defence of the calumniated order, an abundance of quotations which might well be spared, and a few passages of repetition, or of matter that appeared uninteresting. We observe also that the sentences have frequently been curtailed without any curtailment of their sense, a judicious mode of abridgement by which nothing is lost. In other respects the version is executed with great fidelity. It is not necessary to pursue the author's method in giving an account of his work; we shall attempt to do this upon a different arrangement, and draw upon other sources for a running comment. The reinforcement of Jesuits which went out with Dobrizhoffer amounted to threescore. They had a most providential escape from shipwreck in the Plata, where their pilot, being utterly unacquainted with the navigation of that dangerous river, ran them upon the shoals. From Buenos-Ayres they set out for Cordoba, the capital of Tucuman, and the head-quarters of the company in that part of the world. The distance is between five and six hundred miles; and as at that time the equestrian tribes, and more especially the Abipones, were in great force, being in fact masters of the open country, it was a journey of considerable danger, upon which large and strong parties had frequently been cut off. The caravan or waggon-train consisted of somewhat more than an hundred waggons, of the form still in use at Buenos-Ayres at the commencement of the revolution in that miserable province. They were mounted upon two huge wheels, the sides were either of matting or of planks, the tilt covered with hides, which in a country that might properly be called Butcher-land, were applied to every possible use. No iron was used in their construction. The door was at what Dobrizhoffer calls the poop, and the ascent by a ladder; at the prow there was a window; but when the master of the waggon chose to drive, he sate in front, and managed the cattle by means of a long goad suspended beside him, and protruded like a ship's bowsprit. To accommodate these conveyances with seats would have been a refinement far beyond the people of that province, who, of all colonists, had retrograded farthest from all the habitudes of decent life. The poor Jesuit therefore travelled in a recumbent posture, stretched on a pallet; thus he had the benefit of the whole motion over natural roads, (for there were no others,) and Dobrizhoffer says the effect was such that, till after some days seasoning, they were as sick as they had been upon the voyage. Perhaps they scored down the suffering and inconvenience to their account of merits, otherwise they could hardly have overlooked the easy accommodation which a cot or a ham mock would have afforded. The wheels were never greased, they had music therefore wherever they went, and Dobrizhoffer reckons this among the miseries of the journey. Six pair of oxen were allowed to each waggon; they drew with four in fair ways; where the ground was marshy, with eight; the others were to relieve. This alone made twelve hundred oxen necessary for an hundred waggous: but many more were required, not for baggage, the Jesuits carrying little, and the Peons of La Plata none; but for wood, because no fuel was to be found upon those interminable plains, and even for water, which it was necessary to carry, as in the deserts, from one station to another. A numerous body of attendants was required for the care and management of so many oxen. All these men went on horseback: to perform a journey, or even an errand on foot would have been beneath the dignity of their complexion, if there was the slightest mixture of white in its composition; and several horses were thought necessary for each, it being a common practice to ride a beast till it foundered, and then turn it loose. The usual mode of proceeding for such a caravan was in three divisions, about five hundred paces asunder, that, if any accident happened in the one body, it might not impede the other. They started at three in the morning. Two horsemen went at the head of each division as guards. At eight they halted, and each party drew up its waggons in a circle, partly for defence in case of an attack, and also that the cattle might be driven into the circle, and thus more easily caught when they were to be yoked. The cattle were of course turned to graze during the halt, upon the luxuriant pasture of the Pampas. A certain number were slaughtered; this is a work at which every peon is expert. Three fires were kindled to dress the food of the Fathers, of the waggontrain, and of the herdsmen. Three large tents were also pitched; the one served as a church, wherein the portable altar was set up, and mass daily performed; in the other two tables were spread, literally, folding boards being carried for that use. The Jesuits ate in the same order as in one of their own refectories, and the ceremony was observed of reading during the meal. They halted five hours, that the oxen might be spared the labour of draught during the heat of the day. At one o'clock the beasts were driven into the inclosure, and caught by the noose with that dexterity for which the natives are remarkable. The journey was then resumed and continued till sun-set, when they again encamped in the same order for the night. The Jesuits, according to their custom, made up their accounts between this world and the next, by an examination of conscience; a bell, as in their college, college, gave warning at the accustomed hour, and then they retired to rest. The way from Buenos-Ayres to Cordoba had never been so dangerous as when Dobrizhoffer first travelled it. Not a day past upon the journey without some alarm; traces of the savages were seen, or their whistling, or their pipes heard in the distance; a rampart was then formed with the waggons, and the caravan prepared for an attack. Happily all these alarms proved false, and the only accident was an adventure in which Dobriz-hoffer himself, to his sorrow, bore the principal part. Thinking it pleasanter to proceed on foot over the green turf, than endure the jolting of the waggon, he and two of his companions were -keeping pace with the caravan at convenient distance one fine evening, when they saw, and, being ignorant of its projectile means of defence, pursued that creature which the Spaniards call Zorrillo, or, according to his orthography, Zorriño, (the Yagouaré of Azara,) properly termed by the French, Bête puante, and Enfant du Diable. They admired the creature, and ran to catch it as eagerly as three school-boys would have done. Colori nimium credidimus, says poor Dobrizh offer, whose ill fortune it was to outrun his comrades. The stinkard, who it seems is a sure shot at five feet distance, retreated leisurely, conscious of its means of escape, and stopt when the unhappy Jesuit drew nigh, like a tame animal willing to be fondled. Not altogether trusting this appearance, he touched it gently with a stick,nec mora,' as he tells the story in his lively Latin, levato confestim crure Stygiam in me exonerat pestem. Maxillam sinistram liberaliter permingit undique, cursuque citatissimo fugam victrix capit. Quod oculis pepercerit meis id in beneficiis numerandum. Veluti Jovis ignibus ictus obstupui, mihi ipse repente intolerabilis.' It was A stench which might disdain what Araby If Paracelsus, he says, if Theophrastus, if all other chemists went to work with all their art, and all their laboratories and furnaces, they could not have compounded a more intolerable odour. The pain was very great, though the eyes* had fortunately escaped. The cheek, he says, burnt like fire during the whole of the night. It was in vain that he stript off his clothes, and washed, rubbed, and scrubbed his face again and again; the infernal odour remained in full force, and carried with it a sentence of excommunication more instantly and certainly effectual, than a papal 1. Major Gillespie was in company with an English officer who, exposing himself in like manner to the Yagouaré, was blinded by it for several hours, and being near a river plunged into it, as if he had been on fire, to assuage the burning sensation. T 3 interdict. interdict. He was not allowed to approach the tent of his companions, and if his waggon-driver had not, to their mutual comfort, totally lost the sense of smell, even the waggon would have been closed against him. His clothes were rendered utterly useless; there is no possibility of destroying the pungent and intolerable odour. Si mihi sunt lingua centum, he proceeds, immani graveolentis bestiæ odori explicando imparem me crediderim. Illâ nocte a meo separari corpore optabam equidem. Azara relates, on the testimony of an observer, to whom he gives entire credit, that when the pestiferous secretion is discharged in darkness, it is evidently phosphorescent. Cordoba, whither the caravan was bound, was founded in 1573 by D. Geromimo Luis de Cabrera, and so called, because (according to Lozano) its situation resembles that of the city of the same name in Spain. Philip V. made it the capital of Tucuman; the episcopal see had been translated thither from Santiago del Estero, in the year 1700; the diocese, at that time, and till the recent revolution in those countries, was the most extensive in the world, Quebec alone, perhaps, excepted. But the Colegio Maximo, as it was called, was deservedly the boast of Cordoba. This splendid establishment was not more honourable to the Jesuits in the days of their prosperity, than it was every way useful to the country. It was endowed with five large estates, little inferior perhaps in extent to as many counties. But the wealth of the Jesuits was well bestowed. The reproach of wasteful and luxurious expenditure, which was made with so much justice against the lordly monks and clergy of the dark ages, never attached to the Jesuits. The Dean of Cordoba, D. Gregorio Funes, affirms that it will never be forgotten in that country, how truly they conformed in their lives to the strictest principles of the Gospel and Major Gillespie, who was sent as a prisoner from Buenos-Ayres into the interior, declares that their surviving pupils speak of them still with tears of reverential love. The system of education which they followed had the faults which might be expected; there was a sad waste of time and intellectual labour in acquiring the subtleties of a captious logic, and in long courses of useless metaphysics; but the Latin classics were well taught, and men were bred there who did honour by their works to the last age of the Jesuits. Funes himself was one of their pupils; his history is the greatest work which has yet issued : * *Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos Ayres y Tucuman, escrita por el Doctor D. Gregorio Funes, Dean de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Cordova. Buenos Ayres, 1816-17. Three volumes small 4to. A portrait of the author has been engraved at the expense of the English residents in Buenos-Ayres, in token of their respect for the benevolence and excellence of his character. from |