feet are off the ground, he cannot injure the canoe.
When travelling, however, without canoes, they form small rafts, into
which they put their children; and lance in hand, and with bow and
quiver at their backs, they bestride their steeds and tow them across, a
curious spectacle to witness.

The children go perfectly naked; indeed, so do the people generally,
except those who come into the settled districts. The women wear their
masses of black hair almost covering their heads and shoulders. They
dress in a short skirt, with a scarf over the shoulders. "The old
women," observed Captain Kennedy, "are terrible to behold, they having
all the hard work to do. They even paddle the canoes, while the men and
young women sit looking on."

Their villages consist of rows of wretched hovels. They appear to have
no superstitious ideas, but they believe in an evil spirit, against whom
they try to guard by charms and incantations. They are under a chief
cacique; and after the other chiefs in conclave have determined on war,
or rather, on a plundering expedition, and it is concluded, they
separate into their original tribes, each taking opposite directions
with their share of the plunder, to escape the risk of being captured.
A considerable portion of the almost unexplored district--the Gran
Chaco--which they inhabit is a dreary waste of lagoons and marshes,
traversed by rapid, muddy, and tortuous rivers.

JESUIT MISSIONS.

The missions established by the Jesuits show the impotence of their
system for the civilisation of the wild man. The territory where they
carried on their chief labours exists on the eastern bank of the Parana,
to the north of Uruguay and Corrientes, bordering on the Brazilian
territory. After three hundred years of labour, they left these savages
utterly incapable of self-government.

"The Indian mind, indeed," observes Captain Page--an American--"laying
aside its atrocities, has never emerged from the intellectual
development of childhood. These savages showed the imitative faculties
of the animal. When taught, they delved and ploughed, planted cotton
and sugar-cane, and executed work in carpentry and wove fabrics, and
performed other manual operations; yet their reason and intelligence has
not advanced, even _pari passu_ in any degree with the progress of
European civilisation; nor have the natures of their female population
become modified with the slightest trait of the humanities and
tendern