Indians readily embraced Christianity and were baptized, they were not
to be shaken in their notions concerning the sacred _Chimbica,_ as the
puma was called. The missions languished in consequence; the priests
existed in a state of semi-starvation, depending on provisions sent to
them at long intervals from the distant Mexican settlements; and for
many years all their efforts to raise the savages from their miserable
condition were thrown away. At length, in 1701, the mission of Loreto
was taken charge of by one Padre Ugarte, described by Clavigero as a
person of indomitable energy, and great physical strength and courage, a
true muscular Christian, who occasionally varied his method of
instruction by administering corporal chastisements to his hearers when
they laughed at his doctrines, or at the mistakes he made in their
language, while preaching to them. Ugarte, like his predecessors, could
not move the Indians to hunt the puma, but he was a man of action, with
a wholesome belief in the efficacy of example, and his opportunity came
at last.

One day, while riding in the wood, he saw at a distance a puma walking
deliberately towards him. Alighting from his mule, he took up a large
stone and advanced to meet the animal, and when sufficiently near hurled
the missile with such precision and force that he knocked ifc down
senseless. After killing it, he found that the heaviest part of his task
remained, as it was necessary for the success of his project to carry
the beast, still warm and bleeding, to the Indian village; but mow his
mule steadfastly refused to approach it. Father Ugarte was not,
however, to be defeated, and partly by stratagem, partly by force, he
finally succeeded in getting the puma on to the mule's back, after which
he rode in triumph to the settlement. The Indians at first thought it
all a trick of their priest, who was so anxious to involve them in a
conflict with the pumas, and standing at a distance they began jeering