Whether it would not have been better to have tarried a little while, and then to have availed himself of the confidence and affection he had inspired, so as to gather the remnants of his mission again, we cannot say.

At any rate, he consoled himself for the disastrous failure at Natal by setting forth on a fresh scheme of Christian knight-errantry on behalf of the Indians of South America.
Long ago, in Brazil, the Jesuits had done their best to Christianize and protect the Indians; but the Portuguese settlers had, as usual, savagely resented any interference with their cruel oppressions, broken up the Jesuit settlement, and sold their unfortunate converts as slaves.

After this, the Jesuit Fathers had formed excellent establishments in the more independent country of Paraguay, lying to the south, where they had many churches, and peaceful, prosperous, happy communities of Christian Indians around them.

South American Indians are essentially childish beings; and the Jesuits, when providing labour enough to occupy them wholesomely, found themselves obliged to undertake the disposal of the produce, thus not merely rendering their mission self-supporting, but so increasing the wealth of the already powerful Order as to render it a still greater object of jealousy to the European potentates; and when, in the eighteenth century, the tide of opposition set strongly against it, the unecclesiastical traffic of the settlements in Paraguay was one of the accusations.

The result was, that the Jesuit Fathers were banished from South America in 1767; and whether it was that they had neglected to train the Indians in self-reliance, or whether it was impossible to do so, their departure led to an immediate collapse into barbarism; nor had anything since been done on behalf of the neglected race.