no Spaniard should remain for more than three days in an Indian town.
** `Histoire Politique et Philosophique des Indes', vol. i., p. 289
(Gene\ve, 1780).
--

It is, however, to be remembered that Voltaire wrote as a philosopher,
and not as an economist, and that his statement most probably
would be traversed by those who see advancement rather
in material improvement than in moral happiness, for without doubt,
in Lima and in Mexico upon the whole, society must have made
amongst the Spanish and Spanish-descended citizens greater advances
than in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. In some respects
their almost inaccessible situation close to the cataract of the Parana
was favourable to the early Jesuits, and in quick succession
the villages of Loreto, San Francisco Xavier, San Jose, San Ignacio,
San Pedro, and others of less importance, were founded, containing in all
about forty thousand souls.*

--
* Cretineau Joly, `Histoire Religieuse, Politique et Litte/raire
de la Compagnie de Je/sus', vol. iii., cap. v., p. 322 (Paris, 1846).
--

So in the Jesuit reductions of the province of Guayra
was first begun the system of treating the Indians kindly,
and standing between them and the Spanish settlers,
which made the Company of Jesus so hated afterwards in Paraguay.
Little by little their influence grew, so that when, in 1614,
Padre Antonio Ruiz de Montoya arrived, he found that there were already
one hundred and nineteen Jesuits in Guayra and in Paraguay.