the jealousy with which their civilization of the Indians was regarded, and they had only to thunder accusations in the public ears calculated to foment that jealousy, in order to secure the favour of the people. Accordingly, these ambitious, intriguing, and turbulent persons, made not only South America, but Europe itself ring with alarms of the Jesuits. They contended that they were ruining the growing fortunes of the Spanish states,—that they were aiming at an independent power, and were training the Indians for the purpose of effecting it. They talked loudly of wealthy mines, which the Jesuits worked while they kept their location strictly secret. These mines could never be found. They represented that they dwelt in wealthy cities, adorned with the most magnificent churches and palaces, and lived in a condition the most sensual with the Indians. These calumnies, only too well relished by the lazy and rapacious Spaniards, did not fail of their effect—the Jesuits were attacked in their Reductions, harassed in a variety of modes, and eventually driven out of the country; where circumstances connected with the less worthy members of their order in Europe, added their fatal influence to the odium already existing here. But of that anon.
During their existence in this country, the greatest curse and scourge of their Reductions were the Paulistas, or Man-hunters, of Santo Paulo in Brazil. These people were a colony of Mamelucoes, or descendants of Portuguese and Indians; and a more dreadful set of men are not upon record. Their great business was to hunt for mines, and for Indians. For this purpose they ranged through the
