A Vanished Arcadia | Page 9

more comfortable mode of life, to which he adds a faith
sufficient to move the Cordillera of the Andes, but at the same time
restricted by a common-sense and veracity not always observable in
religious writers, render Dobrizhoffer a personal friend after the perusal
of his writings.
-- * Dobrizhoffer's book was written in Latin, and printed in Vienna in
1784 under the title of `Historia de Abiponibus', etc. A German
translation by Professor Keil was published at Pesth in the same year.
The English translation is of the year 1822. --

English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay. Father
Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book
(printed at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now
the province of Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia.
As an Englishman and a Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination in the
eighteenth century), and as one who doubtless knew many of the
Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been most important,
especially as he was a man of great information, much education, an
intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of Jesus at
a comparatively advanced age.
It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion
of the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found.* Literatures,
like other things, have their times of fashion. At one time a knowledge
of Spanish was as requisite as some tincture of French is at present, and
almost as universal. Men from Germany, England, and Holland who
met in a foreign country communicated in that language. In the early
portion of the century Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving
rendered Spanish literature fashionable to some degree.
-- * It is to be remembered that the Spanish colonists were as a rule
antagonistic to the Jesuits, and that, therefore, Spanish writers do not of
necessity hold a brief for the Jesuits in Paraguay. Moreover, the names
of Esmid (Smith), Fildo (Fields), Dobrizhoffer, Cataldini and Tomas
Bruno (Brown, who is mentioned as being `natural de Yorca'), Filge,
Limp, Pifereti, Enis, and Asperger, the quaint medical writer on the
virtues of plants found in the mission territory, show how many foreign
Jesuits were actually to be found in the reductions of Paraguay. For
more information on this matter see the `Coleccion de Documentos
relativos a/ la Expulsion de los Jesuitas de la Republica Argentina y
Paraguay', published and collected by Francisco Javier Brabo, Madrid,
1872. --
Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell drew
some attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe is so little
studied in England. Still leaving apart the purely literary treasures of
the language, it is in Spanish, and almost alone in Spanish, that the
early history of America is to be found.
After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825, some
interest was excited in the Spanish-American countries, stimulated by

the writings of Humboldt; but when it became apparent that on the
whole those countries could never be occupied by Northern Europeans,
interest in them died out except for purposes connected with the Stock
Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches to them which attaches
to no other countries in the world. It was there that one of the greatest
dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure in which the human race
has engaged, took place. What Africa has been for the last twenty years,
Spanish America was three hundred years ago, the difference being that,
whereas modern adventure in Africa goes on under full observation,
and deals in the main with absolutely uncivilized peoples, the conquest
of South America was invested with all the charm of novelty, and
brought the conquerors into contact with at least two peoples almost as
advanced in most of the arts of civilization as they were themselves.
When first Sebastian Cabot and Solis ascended the Parana, they found
that the Guaranis of Paraguay had extended in no instance to the
western shore of either of those rivers. The western banks were
inhabited then, as now, by the wandering Indians of the still not entirely
explored territory of the Gran Chaco. Chaco* is a Quichua Indian word
meaning `hunting' or `hunting-ground', and it is said that after the
conquest of Peru the Indian tribes which had been recently subjugated
by the Incas took refuge in this huge domain of forest and of swamp.
-- * The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in his `Commentarios Reales' (en
Madrid 1723, en la oficina Real y a/ costa de Nicholas Rodriguez
Franco, Impressor de libros, se hallaran en su casa en la calle de el
Poc,o y en Palacio), derives the word from the Quichua `Chacu/' = a
surrounding. If he is right, it would then be equivalent to the Gaelic