The NANDU, or American Ostrich, is | one-twentieth part of its varieties that are found in great numbers in the pampas of to be found in Paraguay. In this class South America. It is the largest bird in naturalists have placed a much greater the world, with the single exception of its variety of birds than any other family conprototype of the African continent. It tains, and though they have some few closely resembles the Ostrich, but its qualities in common, in many others they plumage is less exuberant and valuable, are more or less widely dissimilar. It is and it has one toe less, leaving but two on a well-established opinion, for instance, each foot. that strict connubial fidelity is one of their The RAPACIOUS KIND is well repre- virtues, and that, though living in harmony sented in this region of country by the with each other, every species is true to CONDOR VULTURE, (rare;) the BEARDED- its kind, and transmits an unpolluted race VULTURE; the BRAZILIAN VULTURE; and to its posterity. To this rule, however, the KING VULTURE; the BALD EAGLE; we think there are many exceptions CARACARA EAGLE; VULTURINE CARACARA among the extensive tribe of Parrots, and EAGLE; TURKEY BUZZARD; COMMON or perhaps one or two others. We placed WANDERING FALCON; KITE, Falco Missis- the Crow of Paraguay and its affinities sippiensis of Wilson; WHITE-TAILED HAWK, among the rapacious birds, because there F.dispar. Temm.; SWALLOW-TAILED HAWK, it decidedly prefers all kinds of carrion, F. furcatus, Audubon; HEN-HARRIER, F. and is not omnivorous. Having had for uliginosus, Wilson; and the BURROW- So many centuries a sufficiency of that ING, GREAT-HORNED, LONG-EARED, SHORT-kind of food, its nature has probably unEARED, and WHITE or BARN OWLS. These birds, with the exception of the Owls, are of the greatest use in these countries. Otherwise, from the immense number of oxen that are annually killed, the atmosphere would become tainted by the carrion on the earth. From the luxurious repasts ever ready for them, they are found in vast numbers, and are so easily approached, that we have frequently shot specimens of them with our holster pistols. We may add that great quantities of crows and hawks of many varieties are found in Paraguay, which we are unable to name or classify. One variety of the former is apparently in close affinity to the vulture, being quite black and having no feathers on the head or neck. When feeding upon a carcass they seize the intestines and carry them through the air like a long rope, for a considerable distance. Similar to the vulture, too, they acknowledge a king, who is clothed with extremely white feathers, and flies accompanied by other crows, as by satellites. He always takes his quantum sufficit of food alone, the remainder of the flock standing around with forbearance, and at a respectful distance. His alar extent concurs with his color to make him quite conspicuous, being of about thirty-five inches. dergone a corresponding change. Among But at once enabled one overmastering mind to control the whole. The very senses of each individual were subjugated to the volition of the one next removed above him, and the lips dared not to breathe a sigh for independence. This horrid discipline, surely, could accomplish anything short of absolute impossibilities. Lastly, the community of goods and the perfect equality of the Neophytes, was perhaps the most characteristic trait of the Jesuitical form of government. Ridiculous and unnatural as this system, even when fairly administered, is generally allowed to be, how great an imposture as well as fallacy must it not have involved, when it was nothing but a name? For the poor Indian was made to work in all departments for his lords and masters, and received out of the whole produce of the Reductions, only a scanty supply of coarse clothing, coarse food, and a mud hovel. Latterly, it is true, that the Jesuits, in order to stifle the clamor raised against them, gave to each family a small parcel of land, and three days in the week to work it. But what became of the produce? No market was offered to them at home, nor ships with which to transport it abroad. Nor had they any domestic trade, for they could only exchange commodities in kind. The whole product of this extra labor, therefore, went into the hands of the Jesuits, as offerings to the Virgin Mary--" consecrated to our good Mother," says our author, abandon us in our distress." And thus, who will never through the perfect subjugation of mind and body, which the Jesuits had secured over their Indian proselytes, this apparently liberal allowance of land and time left their condition, for all practical purposes, precisely as it was before. 66 We must close our relation of these wonderful Reductions with one more reference to Charlevoix. It is his version of their downfall which we would quote, adding thereto the evidence of contemporary writers. Then, after an account of their wealth in the height of their prosperity, we will pass to more agreeable topics. It seems that the Spanish settlers of this country of Paraguay most unnaturally conceived that their right to the personal service of the Indians they had conquered by force of arms, was quite as good as any that the Jesuits could urge in support of the power they exercised over those whom they had peaceably subjugated "by the most reasonably objected. Hence arose entrails of Christ." To this the Jesuits dissensions, strife, and all ungodliness, and each party endeavored to supplant the other in the good graces of His Catholic Majesty of Spain. The Jesuits consistently followed out in their representations the hypocritical plan they had adopted from the commencement, and persisted in saying, in personal service. that they did not hold the new Christians The Spaniards, in of the cruelty and extravagant versions of their turn, beset the court with horrid tales the wealth of the fathers; falsehoods about the existence of gold mines were isters, and no effort was left untried to poured into the ears of the avaricious minsubvert the now firmly settled missions of the hard-working and guileless Jesuits. Amidst the continued storm of words, the latter seem court for a considerable length of time. to have prevailed at At length, however, a royal visitor was appointed in 1613, to investigate the mutual charges of the hostile parties, and if possible gain such information as might lead to an impartial judgment. The better to fuldissension. After conferring in private fill his duties, he proceeded to the seat of with several persons who best understood the nature of these difficulties, he came to a conclusion hostile to the interests of the sonal service of the Indians for eleven Spaniards, and deprived them of the permonths of the year. But from this decision H. C. Majesty was pleased to subtract another month. He furthermore declared that neither the tribes of the Guaranis nor the Guaycurus should ever be placed under the subjection of serfdom and that the Jesuits alone should be or slavery, upon any pretence whatever ; charged with the care of instructing and civilizing them. We are informed that the visitor had scarce left Ascension, before there arose so furious a storm against the Jesuits, as that they were obliged to retire from the being the authors of this new regulation, city; whereupon the Spaniards began again to treat the Indians with their usual cruelty and injustice. The great distincthe Spaniards debased the Castilian dignity tion between the hostile parties was, that in holding the Indians to service by brute force, and without giving them anything but a living in return; whilst the fathers of the Society of Jesus contented themselves with first enslaving the mind, and through this more intellectual and certain method, preserved the services of their bodies, giving them only yucca root to eat, and some flimsy garments to clothe their nakedness. The difference was nothing, so far as it concerned the calculations of rival avarice; but it was great in the modus operandi, for one side avowedly worked for themselves, while the other labored professedly for the glory of God and the honor of the Virgin Mary! This is substantially the view which Charlevoix gives of the matter. The remainder of his work is devoted to a tedious narrative of the constant wars and bloodshed which the rascally Spaniards waged against the meek and unresisting Jesuits; in which the last mentioned were always the injured party, and bore with unflinching resignation the miseries inflicted upon them by the former. But he is careful to avoid all deductions which, by possibility, could criminate his brethren, and really gives us no intelligible account of the reasons which led to their total expulsion by Charles III. He simply ends his work by saying that "the prosperity of these new churches, watered with the sweat and manured with the blood of so many apostolic men," has no further reliance save in the piety of a prince who sent orders from Spain for their extermination. We will, therefore, look elsewhere, and give the testimony of Don Gonzalo de Doblas, who was appointed by the Viceroy Vertiz, in 1781, Governor of Conception in the Missiones. This writer was upon the spot soon after the expulsion of the Jesuits; but he allowed fourteen years to elapse before he wrote anything upon the subject-a period quite sufficient to have enabled him to gain information of an impartial nature, no longer warped by the bitter animosity of the hostile parties. We are willing to place confidence in his statements upon this ground. We learn then from Doblas, that the Jesuits planted the first seeds of their own ruin in the fundamental principle of their government. Professing an honest allegiance to the crown, they aimed to monopolize all real authority. The rapid accumulation of their power and wealth alarmed the jealousy of the king, whose mind was constantly inflamed by the sympathetic feelings of his various governors and viceroys in the New World. At last they arrived at the clear conclusion, that if they did not oust the Jesuits, the Jesuits would oust them, and the Christian Republic become entirely independent of the mother country. "In The extraordinary council of H. C. M. Charles III. issued a rejoinder to the reply of Pope Clement XIII. to the royal letter, announcing that the Jesuits had been expelled from the Spanish dominions. Therein they are accused of altering the theological doctrines, and of doubting the authenticity of the sacred writings. China," it proceeds, "and in Malabar, they have rendered compatible the worship of God and Mammon. In Japan, they have persecuted the very bishops and the other religious orders, in a manner so scandalous, that it can never be blotted from the memory of man; while in Europe, they have been the focus and point d'appui of tumults, rebellions, and regicides." "It is proven against them by the undeniable testimony of their own papers, that in Paraguay they took the field, with organized armies, to oppose themselves to the crown; and now, at this very time, have they not been, in Spain, endeavoring to change the whole government, to modify it according to their own pleasure, and to promulgate and put in practice doctrines the most horrible?" Here, then, we have the reliable evidence of a formal document of State, from which the reader can draw his own deductions. The manner of their expulsion was not less secret and conclusive, than the determination which led to it. On the 27th of February, 1767, Charles III. issued a royal decree, banishing the Jesuits from all his dominions. Shortly after this, the prime minister, Count de Aranda, sent peremptory orders to Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos-Aires, to take immediate and active measures for simultaneously seizing them in their strongholds, and shipping them to Europe.* Bucareli received this order *Robertson's Four Years in Paraguay, vol. II. pp. 62, 63, et seq. The Messrs. Robertson profess to have gained much of this information from unpub lished Spanish manuscripts, in possession of Sir Woodbine Parish. on the seventh of June in the same year, and, from the facilities in his power, found that he could fix upon the 22d of July following, as the day on which all the Jesuits should be instantaneously eradicated. midnight, therefore, of the 22d of July, At 1767, they were swept from their homes and possessions to a man. They were marched to Buenos-Aires, from None escaped, whence, as Bucareli expresses it, they were remitted in parcels to the amount of five hundred, as a present to Pope Clement XIII. His Papal Majesty was much incensed at the impertinent presumption of his vassal, the powerful monarch of Spain and the Indies, and refused to grant his "holy and apostolic " benediction upon this measure. His successor, Pope Clement XIV., more pliant to the wishes of the king, ratified, in 1773, the proceedings against the Jesuits; and issued a complete brief-not very brief-consisting of fortyone articles, which we have not seen. Therein we are told that he exonerated King Charles from all blame, and in direct terms made many and weighty charges against the down-stricken Jesuitical order. Such was the disastrous end of this "Christian Republic." Its foundations so firm-its superstructure so grand, which, for the space of one hundred and eightysix years, had excited the envy and the wonder of mankind-in a single day were seen no more. Alas, for the Jesuits! Their goods and chattels-their dwellings and churches their land and cattle-their silver and gold-their tools and workshops their subjects and slaves, were all lost to them, and added to the crown of their jealous sovereign. With all their wisdom, caution, calculation, strength, wealth, learning, and double-dealing, the Jesuits were out-jesuited at last; and at the moment when each individual was aspiring to advancement, and every one thought his house built upon a rock, the followers of Loyola found, to their cost, that the Count de Aranda and Bucareli were stronger than they. From that day to this, they have not sought an open return to these countries. Though many, undoubtedly, exist in South America, none are to be found in Paraguay. In the height of their power, we learn, from a dispatch of Bucareli, that "five hundred Jesuits were distributed over a distance of more than 2,100 miles; that statement of the value of the missionary 2,000 mares, 500 asses, Church and caza de residencia, $700,000 10,000 1,600 1,000 1,400 500 100,000 2,500 3,200 120,000 Total, $940,000 number of cattle in the thirty missions was Mules, Asses, 743,608 44,114 31,603 64,352 3,256 12,705 7,469 225,486 pared with the corresponding list in the "Memoria sobre las Missiones." Don Pedro de Angelis. Buenos-Aires, 1836. hundred and six thousand dollars. And if we estimate this according to the usual standard of difference between the value of money in that day and in our own, the result will be found to exceed by far one hundred millions of dollars at the present time. But the combination of priestly influence and political power ruined them, as we have seen already. "So long as they confined themselves," says Robertson, "to the care of their flocks, and whilst their political situation was feeble or precarious, they went on and prospered; but when they had made those flocks subservient to their aggrandizement, and from year to year, by papal bulls and royal concessions, had isolated and withdrawn themselves from under the control at once of diocesans, viceroys and governors, they got into a false position, and paved the way for their own downfall." But enough of this. It is time that we proceed to the other topic intended for our present communication. The work of Father Martin Dobrizhoffer is on the whole the best guide to what is known of the Natural History of Paraguay proper; but this we shall occasionally improve, as well by our own recollection of what we saw there, as by the accounts of other writers upon the contiguous countries of a much more recent date. For the upper regions of the river Amazon and the rivers Paranà and Paraguay, as far as any knowledge of them has reached us, are very similar in their spontaneous productions, though not in their geological conformation. We shall commence with the principal quadrupeds. The ANTA, or LA GRAN BESTIA, (the great beast,) from its superior size, as well as its dissimilarity to all known animals, claims our first attention. As far as it bears any resemblance to other quadrupeds, it may be likened to the Rhinoceros. It has the same extremely thick hide, the same long upper lip, with which to collect the same food, viz., the grass and herbage, and it is naturally of a mild and gentle disposition. Here, however, the similarity must end: in all else it is sui generis. Ďobrizhoffer's description is the best we have read, and Corresponds with a specimen it was our fortune to see in Paraguay. Its size is about the same with that of a full-grown ass; in shape, if we except its eyes, head, and feet, it resembles the swine; its teeth are sharp and regular, like those in the lower jaw of a calf, save only that it has four tusks in each jaw, similar to those of a wild boar. When enraged, the upper lip is projected to an extent which reminds one of a proboscis. A smooth, short and bare appendage supplies the place of a tail. The stomach contains a pouch, in which are often found a number of polygonous bezoar stones. To these the natives ascribe extraordinary medicinal virtues, either altogether imaginary, or, at least, greatly exaggerated beyond their real value. There is no animal of our continent which seems to be so little known as this, and about which so many contradictions exist, even in the histories of the most celebrated naturalists. In the "Naturalist's Library," edited by Mr. A. A. Gould, A.M., and which professes to use as authority the works of Cuvier, Griffith, Richardson, Geoffroy, Lacepede, Buffon, Goldsmith, Shaw, Montague, and others, we find it stated that the Anta has three toes upon the anterior feet, and four upon the posterior. Goldsmith himself, on the other hand, says it has four claws upon each foot. In a work by Mr. Bennet, entitled "The Garden and Menagerie of the Zoological Society Delineated," it is said to have four toes upon the anterior and three upon the posterior feet. Father Dobrizhoffer, however, who spent twentytwo years in Paraguay, asserts that its fore-feet are cloven into two hollow nails, and the hind-feet into three; and this agrees best with the specimen which we saw during our own brief residence. The inaccurate historian of "Animated Nature" also ascribes to this animal small, long and pendent ears, and a fondness for the water which almost makes it amphibious. But both these statements are erroneous; for it has rather short, straight ears, inclining forwards, and only takes to the water when pursued. Its favorite haunts are the deepest recesses of the most rugged forests, almost inaccessible to both stags and horses, where it sleeps by day and feeds by night. The Anta belongs to the Pachydermatous tribe, so called on account of the extreme thickness of the skin, and farther characterized by the toes being entirely enveloped in in |