With him expired the generation of the conquering soldiers of fortune,
who, schooled in the wars of Italy, brought to America
some of the virtues and all the vices of the Old World.
After him began the reign of the half-caste Spaniards who were
the progenitors of the modern occupants of the Spanish-American republics.
At Irala's death the usual feuds, which have for the last three hundred years
disgraced every part of Spanish America, began. Into them it is unnecessary
to enter, for with Irala died almost the only Governor of Paraguay
who showed the smallest capacity to make himself obeyed.

True indeed that Arias de Saavedra, a native of Paraguay
and Lieutenant-Governor under Ramirez de Velasco, the Governor of Tucuman,
displayed some traces of ability and of intelligence. He it was
who first appealed to Spain for missionaries to convert the Indians.

Whilst Alvar Nunez and Irala, with Nuflo de Chaves and the other captains,
had been conquering and building towns, the Jesuits had been
preaching in the wilderness and gathering together the Indian tribes.
Not ten years after the foundation of their Order,* or about 1550,
they had landed at San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil.

--
* Acquaviva was General of the Order at this time; he was a man
of marked ability and great energy.
--

In 1554, in the district of Guayra, on the upper waters of the Parana,
and above the cataract, the towns of Ontiveros, Ciudad Real, and Villa Rica,
had been founded by Don Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo.