on to the Bay of All-Saints, to Don Diego Lewis Oliveyra, governor and captain-general of the kingdom. The governor ordered an officer to repair with them to Santo Paulo; but it was too late, the prisoners were distributed far and wide, and the commissary could not or dared not attempt to recall them. News also of fresh enterprises meditated against the Paraguay Reductions, by these hideous man-hunters, made the fathers hasten away to put their brethren upon their guard.
The story of the successive devastation of the Reductions is long. The Jesuits were compelled to retreat southward from one place to another with their wretched neophytes. The magistrates and governors gave them no aid, for they entertained no good-will towards them; and they were, even in the central ground between the Parana and Uruguay, compelled to train their people to arms, and defend themselves. It is not only a long but sorrowful recital, both of the injuries received from the Paulistas and from their own countrymen—we must therefore pass it over, and merely notice the manner of their final expulsion.
The court of Spain ordered the banishment of the Jesuits, and the authorities, only too happy to execute the order, surrounded their colleges in the night with soldiers, seized the persons of the missionaries,—their libraries and manuscripts, which in time became destroyed, an irreparable loss to historical literature. Old men in their beds even were not suffered to remain and die in peace, but were compelled to accompany the rest, till they died on their mules in the immense journey from some of the settlements, and across the wildest mountains to the sea. The words of Mr.
