"Before the communion," says Father Prémare, cited by Father Fouquet, "I repeated aloud the acts that ought to be performed on approaching the holy sacrament. Though the Chinese tongue is not fertile in expressions for the affections of the heart, this exercise was very successful. . . . . I remarked in the faces of these good Christians a devotion which I had never yet perceived."

"Loukang," adds the same missionary, "had given me a liking for country missions. I walked out of the town and found numbers of poor people everywhere at work. I accosted one of them, whose looks were prepossessing, and spoke to him concerning God. He seemed pleased with what I said, and invited me, by way of doing me an honor, to pay a visit to the Hall of Ancestors. This is the best building in the town, and belongs in common to all the inhabitants, because, having for a long time made it a practice not to intermarry with strangers, they are now all related, and have the same forefathers. Here then it was that several of them, quitting their work, assembled to hear the sacred doctrine." Is not this a scene of the Odyssey, or rather of the Bible?

An empire whose immutable manners had for two thousand years been proof against time, revolutions, and conquest,-this empire is suddenly changed at the voice of a Christian monk, who has repaired thither alone from the extremities of Europe. The most deeply-rooted prejudices, the most ancient customs, a religion consecrated by a long succession of ages, all give way, all disappear, before the mere name of the God of the gospel. At the very moment we are writing, at the moment when Christianity is persecuted in Europe, it is propagated in China. That fire which was thought to be extinguished is rekindled, as is invariably the case after persecutions. When the clergy were massacred in France, when they were stripped of their possessions and honors, many were ordained priests in secret; the proscribed bishops were often obliged to refuse orders to young men desirous of flying to martyrdom. This adds one more to the thousand proofs already existing, how grossly they had mistaken

'Lettr. édif.

2 Lettr. édif., tome xvii. p. 152, et seq.

the spirit of Christianity who hoped to annihilate it by fire and fagot. Unlike all human things, whose nature is to perish under torments, the true religion flourishes in adversity: for God has impressed it with the same seal that he has set upon virtue.

CHAPTER IV.

MISSIONS OF PARAGUAY.

Conversion of the Savages.1

WHILE Christianity flourished among the worshippers of Fohi, and other missionaries were announcing it to the noble Japanese or at the courts of sultans, it was seen gliding, as it were, into the inmost forests of Paraguay, to tame those Indian nations who lived like birds on the branches of trees. What an extraordinary religion must that be which, at its will, unites the political and moral forces, and from its superabundant resources produces governments as excellent as those of Minos and Lycurgus! While Europe had as yet but barbarous constitutions, formed by time and chance, the Christian religion revived in the New World all the wonders of the ancient systems of legislation. The wandering tribes of the savages of Paraguay became fixed, and at the word of God an evangelical republic sprang up in the wildest of deserts. And who were the men of great genius that performed these prodigies? Simply Jesuits, who were often thwarted in their designs by the avarice of their countrymen.

It was a practice generally adopted in Spanish America, to make slaves of the Indians and to sacrifice them to the labors of the mines. In vain did the clergy, both secular and regular, a thousand times remonstrate against this practice, not less impolitic than barbarous. The tribunals of Mexico and Peru, and even the court of Madrid, re-echoed with the continual com

1 For this and the following chapter, see Lettres édifiantes, vols. viii. and ix. ; the History of Paraguay, by Charlevoix; Lozano's Historia de la Compagnia de Jesus en la provincia del Paraguay; Muratori's Il Christianesimo felice; and Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.

plaints of the missionaries. "We pretend not," said they to the colonists, "to prevent your making a profit of the Indians in legitimate ways; but you know that it never was the king's intention that you should consider them as slaves, and that the law of God expressly forbids this. . . . . We deem it wrong to deprive them of their liberty, to which they have a natural right; and nothing can authorize us to call that right in question."2

At the foot of the Cordilleras, on the side next to the Atlantic, between the Oronoko and Rio de la Plata, there was still an immense region, peopled by savages, to which the Spaniards had not extended their devastations. In the recesses of its forests the missionaries undertook to found a Christian republic and to confer at least upon a small number of Indians those blessings which they had not been able to procure for all.

The first step they took was to obtain of the court of Spain the liberty of all the savages whom they might convert to the faith. At this intelligence the colonists took the alarm, and it was only by the aid of wit and address that the Jesuits stole, in some measure, the permission to shed their blood in the forests of the New World. At length, having triumphed over human rapacity and malice, and meditating one of the noblest designs that ever entered into the heart of man, they embarked for Rio de la Plata.

That great river has for its tributary the stream which gave name to the country and the missions whose history we are sketching. Paraguay, in the language of the savages, signifies the Crowned River, because it rises in the lake Xarayes, by which it thus seems to be crowned. Before it swells the Rio de la Plata, it receives the waters of the Parana and Uraguay. Forests, in which are embosomed other forests, levelled by the hand of time, morasses and plains completely inundated in the rainy season,―mountains which rear deserts over deserts,—form part of the vast regions watered by the Paraguay. All kinds of game abound in them, as well as tigers and bears. The woods are full of bees, which produce remarkably white wax and

1 Robertson's History of America.

2 Charlevoix, Hist. de Paraguay, tome ii. pp. 26 and 27.

honey of uncommon fragrance. Here are seen birds with the most splendid plumage, resembling large flowers of red and blue, among the verdant foliage of the trees. A French missionary, who lost himself in these wilds, gives the following description of them :

:

"I continued my route without knowing whither it would lead me, and without meeting any person from whom I could obtain information. In the midst of these woods I sometimes met with enchanting spots. All that the study and ingenuity of man could devise to render a place agreeable would fall short of the beauties which simple nature has here collected.

"These charming situations reminded me of the ideas which I had formerly conceived when reading the lives of the ancient recluses of Thebais. I formed a wish to pass the rest of my days in these forests, whither Providence had conducted me, that I might devote all my attention to the affair of my salvation, far from all intercourse with men; but, as I was not the master of my destiny, and the commands of the Lord were expressly signified in those of my superiors, I rejected this idea as an illusion."1

The Indians who were found in these retreats resembled their place of habitation only in its worst points. This indolent, stupid, and ferocious race exhibited in all its deformity the degradation of man after his fall. Nothing affords a stronger proof of the degeneracy of human nature than the littleness of the savage amid the grandeur of the desert.

On their arrival at Buenos Ayres, the missionaries sailed up the Rio de la Plata, entered the waters of the Paraguay, and dispersed over its wilds. The ancient accounts portray them with a breviary under the left arm, a large cross in the right hand, and with no other provision than their trust in the Almighty. They represent them forcing their way through forests, wading through morasses where they were up to the waist in water, climbing rugged rocks, searching among caverns and precipices, at the risk of meeting with serpents and ferocious beasts instead of men whom they were seeking.

Several perished with hunger and from the hardships they

1 Lettr. édif., tome viii. p. 381.

endured. Others were massacred and devoured by the savages. Father Lizardi was found transfixed with arrows upon a rock; half of his body was mangled by birds of prey, and his breviary lay open beside him at the office for the dead. When a missionary thus discovered the remains of one of his companions, he hastened to perform the funeral rites; and, filled with great joy, he sung a solitary Te Deum over the grave of the martyr.

Such scenes, perpetually recurring, astonished the barbarous hordes. Sometimes they gathered round the unknown priest who spoke to them concerning God, and looked at the firmament to which he pointed; at others they ran from him as a magician, and were overcome by unusual terrors. The religious followed, stretching out his hands to them in the name of Jesus Christ. If he could not prevail on them to stop, he planted his cross in a conspicuous place and concealed himself in the woods. The savages by degrees approached to examine the standard of peace erected in the wilderness; some secret magnet seemed to attract them to this emblem of their salvation. The missionary then, sallying forth all at once from his ambuscade, and taking advantage of the surprise of the barbarians, invited them to relinquish their miserable way of life, and to enjoy the comforts of society.

When the Jesuits had succeeded in their efforts with a few Indians, they had recourse to another method of winning souls. They had remarked that the savages of that region were extremely sensible to the charms of music: it is even asserted that the waters of the Paraguay impart a finer tone to the voice. The missionaries, therefore, embarked in canoes with the new converts, and sailed up the rivers singing religious hymns. The neophytes repeated the tunes, as tame birds sing to allure the wild ones into the net of the fowler. The savages were always taken by this pious snare. Descending from their mountains, they hastened to the banks of the rivers to listen, to the captivating sounds; and many, plunging into the water, swam after the enchanted bark. The bow and arrow dropped from the hand of the savage, and a foretaste of the social virtues and of the first sweets of humanity seemed to take possession of his wondering and confused soul. He beheld his wife and his