Missionaries In The Solitary Station I Have Referred To, After Ten Years' Probing, Have Been Unable To Find Any Approach To Worship In Their Darkened Minda.

"The miserable wretches who inhabit that vast wilderness are so low in the scale of reasoning beings that one might doubt whether or not they have human souls." [Footnote:

Washburn's "History of Paraguay."] These "lost sheep" have no word to express God, and have no idols. "The poverty of the Indian dialects of the Chaco is scarcely surpassed by that of the dumb brutes."

These wretched tribes have perfect community of goods; what is secured by one belongs equally to all. A piece of cloth is either torn up and distributed, or worn in turns by each one. The shirt which I gave my guide, Yantiwau, for much arduous toil, was worn by one and another alternately. Much as the savage at first desires to possess some garment, it does not take long for him to tire of it. All agree with Mark Twain, that "the human skin is the most comfortable of all costumes," and, clothed in the sunlight, the human form divine is not unlovely.

Sometimes the Indians of the interior take skins, etc., to the Paraguayan towns across the river. Not knowing the use of money, their little trading is done by barter. Their knowledge of value is so crude that on one occasion they refused a two-dollar axe for an article, but gladly accepted a ten-cent knife. The Chaco Indian, however, is seldom seen in civilization.

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