of their own accord enter, the water, they are commonly not molested;
but if by chance some unusually big or ferocious specimen of these
fearsome fishes does bite an animal--taking off part of an ear, or
perhaps of a teat from the udder of a cow--the blood brings up every
member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, and unless the
attacked animal can immediately make its escape from the water it is
devoured alive. Here on the Paraguay the natives hold them in much
respect, whereas the caymans are not feared at all. The only redeeming
feature about them is that they are themselves fairly good to eat,
although with too many bones.

At daybreak of the third day, finding we were still moored off
Concepcion, we were rowed ashore and strolled off through the streets
of the quaint, picturesque old town; a town which, like Asuncion, was
founded by the conquistadores three-quarters of a century before our
own English and Dutch forefathers landed in what is now the United
States. The Jesuits then took practically complete possession of what
is now Paraguay, controlling and Christianizing the Indians, and
raising their flourishing missions to a pitch of prosperity they never
elsewhere achieved. They were expelled by the civil authorities
(backed by the other representatives of ecclesiastical authority) some
fifty years before Spanish South America became independent. But they
had already made the language of the Indians, Guarany, a culture-
tongue, reducing it to writing, and printing religious books in it.
Guarany is one of the most wide-spread of the Indian tongues, being
originally found in various closely allied forms not only in Paraguay
but in Uruguay and over the major part of Brazil. It remains here and
there, as a lingua general at least, and doubtless in cases as an
original tongue, among the wild tribes. In most of Brazil, as around
Para and around Sao Paulo, it has left its traces in place-names, but