that the Jesuits believed; but when Maceta and Cataldino
arrived at Guayra and founded the Reduction of Loreto,
their success at first was of a nature that almost justified
the epithet `miraculous', an epithet which indeed all men apply
to any enterprise of theirs which meets success. Almost from
the first inception of the missions, the Jesuits found themselves
in the strange position of, though being hated by the Spanish settlers,
yet recurred to as mediators when any of the wild tribes
proved too powerful for the Spanish arms. Thus, far from cities,
far from even such elementary civilization as Paraguay should show,
almost upon the edge of the great cataract of the Parana,
the Jesuits founded their first reduction; to which the Indians flocked
in such numbers that a second was soon necessary, to which they gave
the name of San Ignacio, in memory of the founder of their rule.

--
* Some of the Spanish writers refer to Filds as Padre Tom Filds.
His real name was Fields, and he was a Scotchman.
--

For the first few years all went well with the Jesuits. The Indians,
happy to escape the persecutions of the Spaniards on the one hand,
and the incursions of the Paulistas* on the other, flocked to the reductions,
mission after mission was soon formed, and the wild Indians
gathered up into townships and taught the arts of peace.
But though the Guaranis at first entered into the Jesuit reductions
as a refuge against their persecutors, the Portuguese and Spaniards,
soon, as was only natural to men accustomed to a wild forest life,
they found the Jesuit discipline too irksome, and often fled
back to the woods. Then the poor priest, left without his flock,