and La Concepcion; and the two first founded, San Ignacio and Loreto,
were ruined utterly. The wretched Indians, to whom by law
the Jesuits were forbidden to serve out firearms, stood no chance
against the well-trained Paulistas, with their horses, guns, and bloodhounds,
assisted as they were by troops of savage Indians who discharged
poisoned arrows from blowpipes and from bows. Small wonder that,
as Montoya, Charlevoix, Lahier,*1* and Filiberto Monero*2* all agree,
despair took hold of them, so that in many instances
they cursed the Jesuits and fled back to the woods. When one reflects
that many of the Indian tribes looked upon baptism as a poison,*3*
it is not strange that they should have associated effect with cause,
and set down all their sufferings to the influence of the malignant rite
to which the Jesuits had subjected them. The isolated Jesuits
ran considerable risk from their own sheep, and Padre Mola,
after the ruin of San Antonio, was suspected by them of being in league
with the Paulistas, and had to flee for safety to another town;
and as a touch of comedy is seldom wanting to make things bitterer
to those in misfortune, a troop of savage Indians, having arrived
to attack the Reduction of San Antonio, and finding it already burning,
instantly thought poor Padre Mola had been the instigator,
and, starting on his trail, almost surprised him before he reached a refuge
from their patriotic rage.

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*1* Lahier (Francisci) S. I., `Annae Paraguarie, Annor. 1635, et duor. sequ.'
*2* `Relazioni della Provincia del Paraguai'.
*3* Brabo.
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Thus in the greater world reformers of all sorts have not infrequently