A Vanished Arcadia | Page 6

human heart, or say what their superiors in Europe may, or perhaps may not, have had in view? When all is said and done, and now their work is over, and all they worked for lost (as happens usually with the efforts of disinterested men), what crime so terrible can men commit as to stand up for near upon two centuries against that slavery which disgraced every American possession of the Spanish* crown? Nothing is bad enough for those who dare to speak the truth, and those who put their theories into practice are a disgrace to progressive and adequately taxed communities. Nearly two hundred years they strove, and now their territories, once so populous and so well cultivated, remain, if not a desert, yet delivered up to that fierce-growing, subtropical American plant life which seems as if it fights with man for the possession of the land in which it grows. For a brief period those Guaranis gathered together in the missions, ruled over by their priests, treated like grown-up children, yet with a kindness which attached them to their rulers, enjoyed a half-Arcadian, half-monastic life, reaching to just so much of what the world calls civilization as they could profit by and use with pleasure to themselves. A commonwealth where money was unknown to the majority of the citizens, a curious experiment by self-devoted men, a sort of dropping down a diving-bell in the flood of progress to keep alive a population which would otherwise soon have been suffocated in its muddy waves, was doomed to failure by the very nature of mankind. Foredoomed to failure, it has disappeared, leaving nothing of a like nature now upon the earth. The Indians, too, have vanished, gone to that limbo which no doubt is fitted for them. Gentle, indulgent reader, if you read this book, doubt not an instant that everything that happens happens for the best; doubt not, for in so doing you would doubt of all you see -- our life, our progress, and your own infallibility, which at all hazards must be kept inviolate. Therefore in my imperfect sketch I have not dwelt entirely on the strict concatenation (after the Bradshaw fashion) of the hard facts of the history of the Jesuits. I have not set down too many dates, for the setting down of dates in much profusion is, after all, an ad captandum appeal to the suffrages of those soft-headed creatures who are styled serious men.
-- * This, of course, applies to the possessions of all European States in America equally with Spain. --
Wandering along the by-paths of the forests which fringe the mission towns, and set them, so to speak, in the hard tropical enamel of green foliage, on which time has no lien, and but the arts of all-destroying man are able to deface, I may have chanced upon some petty detail which may serve to pass an hour away.
A treatise of a forgotten subject by a labourer unskilled, and who, moreover, by his very task challenges competition with those who have written on the theme, with better knowledge, and perhaps less sympathy; a pother about some few discredited and unremembered priests; details about half-savages, who `quoi! ne portaient pas des haults de chausses'; the recollections of long silent rides through forest paths, ablaze with flowers, and across which the tropic birds darted like atoms cut adrift from the apocalypse; a hotch-potch, salmagundi, olla podrida, or sea-pie of sweet and bitter, with perhaps the bitter ruling most, as is the way when we unpack our reminiscences -- yes, gentle and indulgent reader, that's the humour of it.
R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
Gartmore, March 30, 1900.

Contents

Chapter I
Early history -- State of the country -- Indian races -- Characteristics of the different tribes -- Dobrizhoffer's book -- Various expeditions -- Sebastian Cabot -- Don Pedro de Mendoza -- Alvar Nunez -- His expedition and its results -- Other leaders and preachers -- Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus

Chapter II
Early days of the missions -- New settlements founded -- Relations of Jesuits with Indians and Spanish colonists -- Destruction of missions by the Mamelucos -- Father Maceta -- Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya -- His work and influence -- Retreat of the Jesuits down the Parana

Chapter III
Spain and Portugal in South America -- Enmity between Brazilians and Argentines -- Expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay -- Struggles with the natives -- Father Mendoza killed -- Death of Father Montoya

Chapter IV
Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay -- His labours as apostolic missionary -- His ambitions and cunning -- Pretensions to saintliness -- His attempts to acquire supreme power -- Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor

Chapter V
Renewal of the feud between the Bishop and Don Gregorio -- Wholesale excommunications in Asuncion -- Cardenas