purchase their good will; when voluntary distributions had been completed, those Indians frequently stripped the Father of what formed his own little stock, even to his altar furniture and clothing, and more than once shed his blood; still the indefatigable society returned to the attack, and abundance of volunteers were found to go upon this forlorn hope. We have some account of this nation in a letter written by Father Ignatius Chome to Father Vanthiennen, from Tarija, on the 3d of October, 1735. Tarija is a small town in the north-eastern part of Potosi, upon a stream of the same name, which falls into the Rio Vermeiò, about the 22d degree of south latitude, and was then a missionary station, dedicated to St. Bernard, and a frontier Spanish post. Father Herran, the Provincial, sent from this place three missionaries who had arrived from the banks of the Uruguay, Fathers Lizardi and Pons, together with the letter writer, and after a persevering but unsuccessful effort, they were withdrawn by the Provincial. The letter gives an account of their mission; and towards its close, is a general description of this people, and some of their customs; it is to be observed, that these fathers dwelt for some time amongst them, and spoke their language. Father Chomè states that they have no divinities nor public worship; their females make a strong drink, with which they are frequently intoxicated. The following conversation occurred, he writes, between him and one of them: Indian. "You give yourself a great deal of useless trouble; the Indians, shutting his hand, have their hearts closed like my fist." Missionary. Missionary. "You deceive yourself; you do not say enough their heart is more hard than a stone.' Indian. "Neither more nor less; but then they are more clever than you think, and more cunning; there is no man, however sharp he may be, whom they will not deceive; unless at least he has precaution, and is greatly on his guard."

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We shall now mention a few of their customs which he testifies, from whose nature and the analogy to what has previously fallen under our view amongst the other nations, we are of opinion that if the missionaries had had the same opportunity in this place as in the neighbouring tribes they would have found a belief in one or more divinities and a species of worship:

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'They have no physicians, but one or two of the most aged in their villages: all the science of these quacks consists in puffing round the patient to blow away the disease. When I at the first time left Caya, one of the daughters of the captain was sick. Upon my return soon after she was recovered. Being somewhat feverish her mother strongly recommended to me to be blown upon by the doctor. She perceived that I ridiculed it as folly. 'Listen to me,' said she,

'my daughter

was very sick when you went away from us, you find her in perfect health at your return. How has she been cured? Solely in consequence of having been blown upon.""

This looks very like the power which the jugglers in other places claim, through the interference of their manitous: if the blowing of any ordinary individual would answer the healing purpose, there would only be the appearance of expecting a natural effect from its proper cause; but when the sanitory puff is expected from only a special description of persons, it appears to be a recourse through that particular order of man to a supernatural power. This we take to be a clear evidence of a religious sentiment in the people amongst whom it is found. If it was an evident revelation from heaven that the effect would be produced by the Almighty upon the performance of this ceremony, the belief would be Faith, the expectation would be Hope, the observance would be Religion: but without this evidence it would be superstition, which is the religious principle misapplied.

The Father relates that whilst he was at Caya, he observed an Indian who worked at his hut with him become very feeble and scarcely able to labour, this led to the inquiry if he was sick, "no" said the Indian "it is only the consequence of fasting." Upon the missionary asking why he fasted, he stated that his wife had just been delivered of a child, and it was therefore unlawful for him to taste food or drink during three days. Father Chomè expostulated with him, and concluded by advising him to eat, that fasting might be useful for his wife but not for him, and the Indian seemed to think so too. We cannot but surmise that this custom which was general in the tribe is founded upon some superstitious belief, and regret that the missionary's curiosity did not lead him to make some inquiry, or if he did, that he has not given us the result.

When they perceive the approach of dissolution they surround the bed of the dying for days previous, to pour forth their lamentations; the omission of which would be most painful to the patient as it would be a token of disrespect: they bury their dead with great care, having first inurned the body they inter it in their dwelling; the women continue for months to visit thrice a day the spot of interment to bewail the dead after the decease:

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They believe in the immortality of the soul, but without knowing what becomes of it hereafter, they imagine that after leaving the body it wanders in the briars and underwood of the forests round their villages, and go every morning in search of it, until tired of their fruitless inquiry they abandon the pursuit. They must have some idea of the metem psychosis, for whilst I was one day conversing with an Indian woman who had left her daughter at a neighbouring village she was terrified at

seeing a fox pass near us. 'Might not that' said she 'be my daughter's soul who perhaps has died?'

They draw a bad augury from the singing of certain birds, and particularly of one of an ash colour, not larger than a sparrow, which is called chochos. Should they begin a journey and hear it sing, they go no farther, but return immediately home. I recollect that, one day, conversing with the captains of three villages and a great number of Indians, one of those chochos began to sing in a neighbouring wood, they were dumb and terrified, and the conversation was terminated."

He informs us that the sorcerers who are held in high estimation in other tribes will not be allowed amongst them, but are execrated. A few months before he visited Caya, four Indians of the tribe of Sinindita had been burned alive upon the suspicion that the son of one of the captains died by their sorcery: and when the puffers cannot quickly blow away sickness, they are persuaded that the patient is bewitched. He concludes his letter by stating that he knows not how far he would be carried were he to enter into a detail of all the ridiculous superstitions of this nation. This we look upon to be evidence that they had a belief in the existence of one or more Gods, and believed the interference of those supernatural beings in human concerns, and frequently through the agency of man by means of rites or invocations or covenant; and thus we believe they had religion though the missionary could not exactly testify in a satisfactory manner in what it consisted.

Previously to his entering upon this mission Father Chomè wrote from Buenos Ayres on the 21st of June 1732, to Father Vanthiennen; in that letter he gives the history of this nation which we insert as it will tend greatly to explain the origin of the neglect which he testifies; and also to exhibit the insufficiency of those grounds upon which some European writers have endeavoured by means of this testimony to establish the position, that since whole nations of atheists were discovered by the missionaries in South America, we must naturally conclude that the belief in the existence of a God is a human and political invention.

After describing the nation of the Guaraniens to the east of the Paraguay, which consisted of thirty congregations, comprising one hundred and thirty-eight thousand souls, who, "by the fervour of their piety and the innocence of their manners remind us of the first ages of Christianity," he tells us a fact which would appear obvious, that in a nation just emerged from barbarism, the ideas through the senses are those which are predominant and most permanent:

"But these people greatly resemble arid lands which need perpetual culture. That which does not strike their senses leaves but a slight impression on their minds; and on this account it is necessary to inculcate unceasingly upon them the truths of faith; and it is only by the assiduous care which is taken in their instruction that they are preserved in the practice of all Christian virtues."

Hence too we must naturally conclude that if the most irreligious portion of this nation, separated from the better part previously to their having received instruction, and through hatred to that instruction, and having made it a leading principle to destroy even those who taught the Indian worship, for the purpose of keeping aloof from religion of every description, emigrated from their country, very little public worship would be found amongst their children; yet it would not be a good logical consequence that their progenitors were atheists, and that the cunning of man introduced notions of a divinity. We have already shewn that this nation of the Chiriguanos would not allow amongst them any of those magicians or enchanters who were the ministers of religion amongst other tribes. We now produce evidence to shew that the remaining characteristics above mentioned belong to them. The account which Father Chomè gives in his letter from Buenos Ayres, previously to his going amongst them, he had learned on the mission which he had just left, that of the Gauraniens:

"To give you some idea of this nation I must go back. When the Guaraniens submitted to the gospel, and formed into congregations by our first missionaries, began to be a numerous and fervent Christian people, there were amongst them some infidels whose ferocity could not be overcome, and who obstinately refused to open their eyes to the light of faith. These barbarians fearing the anger of their countrymen whose example they refused to follow, resolved to abandon their native country, and search an asylum elsewhere; for this purpose they crossed the river Paraguay, and advancing into the country fixed their habitation in the midst of the mountains.

"The nations into whose country they came felt distrust towards them, and after having deliberated upon the part they should take, whether to declare war against the strangers, or permit them to live quietly in the mountains, they determined, that having been born under a scorching sun and migrating to a very cold region they could not long withstand the rigours of so severe a climate, and would soon be miserably wasted away. Chiriguano said they in their own language, the cold will destroy them; hence their name of Chiriguanos, which distinguishes them from the Guaraniens from whom they sprung, and whose country they desired to forget."

The conjectures of the council were baffled, the Chiriguanos multiplied, and in a few years amounted to over 30,000 souls,

they were warlike and by gradual inroads and boisterous assaults got possession of the larger portion of the mountain region which spreads about the head waters of the Picolmaio and Parapiti the upper streams of the Rio Mamore. Various efforts had been made by the Jesuits, the Dominicans and the Augustinians to introduce the gospel amongst these persons; but upon the same principles that they forsook their country and nation, they generally refused to hear the instructors, and having at one time allowed the Dominicans to form a missionary establishment, they after some time surrounded them at night and massacred them and their converts, which caused an irruption of the Spaniards from Tarija into their country, who in a few battles slew 300 and made 1000 prisoners, after which this tribe that before considered itself invincible was greatly humbled, and besought peace, joining a request that Jesuit missionaries might be sent to them. This was but the insincere petition of a cunning and hypocritical and defeated foe: and it was under such circumstances that Father Chomè and his companions were received by them. We in like manner discover that those cannibals of whom mention was made in a former page, were the descendants of refugee Indians who having plundered and murdered upon his return a noble Portuguese that first penetrated in the reign of John II. from Brazil nearly to the country of the Peruvian Incas, fled to the mountains dreading the vengeance of his countrymen. We have perhaps devoted too much of our space to expose the assertion that those nations in which there was no appearance of religion were the children of atheists who preserved the belief of their fathers, and thus gave evidence that the belief in the existence of God was an invention unknown to the children of nature; and to shew that they were descended from nations who had divinities and worship which those abandoned men cast away and disregarded, as also that the practices of superstition which they retained were full proof of their belief in supernatural powers and the influence of those powers upon the affairs of men: and thus that even amongst those who appear to be upon the lowest scale of the human race there exists the evidence of religion. Father Chomè himself writes of the Chiriguanos that "at their head are caciques who are a sort of enchanters given up to witchcraft and magical practices."

The following extract of a letter from Father Cat, written at Buenos Ayres on the 18th of May, 1729, will explain the source of the caciques' power, and exhibit the foundation of the statements which we so often meet with, that there was no regular government amongst those tribes :