all well armed and painted, and with plates of metal on their heads
to reflect the sun, and so strike terror to their enemies.
To save the horses they were put on board,*4* whilst the Indians
marched along the bank, keeping up with the ships. Horses at that time
in Paraguay and in Peru often were worth one thousand crowns of gold,
though Azara tells us that in the last century in Buenos Ayres
you could often buy a good horse for two needles, so cheap had they become.
Then, as at present, time was of no account in Paraguay, so almost every day
they landed the horses to keep them in condition and to chase
the ostriches and deer.

--
*1* These backwaters are known in Guarani by the name of `aguapey'.
*2* The vinchuca is a kind of flying bug common in Paraguay.
Its shape is triangular, its colour gray, and its odour noxious.
It is one of the Hemiptera, and its so-called scientific appellation
is `Conorhinus gigas'.
*3* R. B. Cunninghame Graham writes elsewhere: "All over South America
the jaguar is called a tiger (tigre)." -- A. L., 1998.
*4* Azara, in his `Historia del Paraguay', etc., tells us that in 1551
Domingo de Irala at Asuncion bought a fine black horse
for five thousand gold crowns. He bound himself to pay for him
out of the proceeds of his first conquest.
--

Just the kind of army that a thinking man would like to march with;
not too much to eat, but, still, a pleasant feeling of marching
to spread religion and to make one's fortune, with but the solitary
unpleasant feature to the soldier -- the system of payment for provisions
which the Governor prescribed. All was new and strange; the world was