--

Charlevoix remarks (`History of Paraguay') `that it seems as if Providence,
in granting him miraculous powers, had forgotten the other necessary steps
to make them effective.' That he really had these powers seems strange,
but San Francisco Solano narrates of himself that, in passing through
the Chaco, he learned the languages of several of the tribes,
and `preached to them in their own tongues of the birth, death,
and transfiguration of Christ, the mysteries of the Trinity,
Transubstantiation, and Atonement; that he explained to them
the symbols of the Church, the Papal succession from St. Peter downwards,
and that he catechized the Indians by thousands, tens and hundreds
of thousands, and that they came in tears and penitence
to acknowledge their belief.'

Of course, to-day it is difficult to controvert these statements,
even if inclined to do so; but the languages spoken by the Chaco Indians
are amongst the most difficult to learn of any spoken by the human race,
so much so that Father Dobrizhoffer, in his `History of the Abipones',
says `that the sounds produced by the Indians of the Chaco
resembled nothing human, so do they sneeze, and stutter, and cough.'
In such a language the Athanasian Creed itself would be puzzling
to a neophyte.

He also says that several of the Jesuits who had laboured
for years amongst the Indians could never master their dialects,
and when they preached the Indians received their words
with shouts of laughter. This the good priest attributed to
the presence of a `mocking devil' who possessed them. It may be
that the mocking devil was but a sense of humour, the possession of which,