relatively young. Each night the Governor religiously wrote up his diary,
now chronicling the death of some good horse, or of an Indian,
or commenting upon the fruits, the fish, the animals, the trees,
and `all the other things of God which differ from those in the Castiles.'
Occasionally a fight took place with Guasarapos or with Pagayuas,
but nothing of much account (`de mucha monta'); always the tales of gold-mines
to be met with further on. Eventually the expedition came to a point
not far from where is now the town of Corumba. There Alvar Nunez founded
a town to which he gave the name of Reyes, which has long fallen into decay.
He also sent two captains to explore and search for gold,
waiting two or three months for their return, and suffering from
a quartan ague which confined him to his bed; then, having failed to find
the talked-of gold-mines, he set his face again towards Asuncion.
Just before starting he gave the final blow to his waning popularity.
Some of his followers, having taken Indian girls, had hidden them
on board the ships; this, when he knew it, Nunez at once forbade,
and, sending for the fathers of the girls, restored their children to them.
`With this,' he says, `the natives were much pleased, but the Spaniards
rendered angry and desperate, and for this cause they hated me.'
Nothing more natural, and for the same cause the Spanish Paraguayans
hated the Jesuits who carried out the policy which the wise Governor began.

On April 8, 1543, the Governor returned to Asuncion,
worn out and ill with ague. There he found all confusion. Domingo de Irala,
a clever, ambitious Biscayan soldier who had been interim Governor
before Nunez had arrived, had worked upon the people,
saying that Nunez wished to take away their property.
As their chief property was in Indians whom they had enslaved,
this rendered Nunez most unpopular, and the same kind of allegations
were laid against him as were laid against the Jesuits