of what the world calls civilization as they could profit by and use
with pleasure to themselves. A commonwealth where money was unknown
to the majority of the citizens, a curious experiment by self-devoted men,
a sort of dropping down a diving-bell in the flood of progress
to keep alive a population which would otherwise soon have been suffocated
in its muddy waves, was doomed to failure by the very nature of mankind.
Foredoomed to failure, it has disappeared, leaving nothing of a like nature
now upon the earth. The Indians, too, have vanished, gone to that limbo
which no doubt is fitted for them. Gentle, indulgent reader,
if you read this book, doubt not an instant that everything that happens
happens for the best; doubt not, for in so doing you would doubt
of all you see -- our life, our progress, and your own infallibility,
which at all hazards must be kept inviolate. Therefore in my imperfect sketch
I have not dwelt entirely on the strict concatenation
(after the Bradshaw fashion) of the hard facts of the history of the Jesuits.
I have not set down too many dates, for the setting down of dates
in much profusion is, after all, an ad captandum appeal
to the suffrages of those soft-headed creatures who are styled serious men.

--
* This, of course, applies to the possessions of all European States
in America equally with Spain.
--

Wandering along the by-paths of the forests which fringe the mission towns,
and set them, so to speak, in the hard tropical enamel of green foliage,
on which time has no lien, and but the arts of all-destroying man
are able to deface, I may have chanced upon some petty detail which may serve
to pass an hour away.