A Vanished arcadia : Being Some Account on the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767

R.B. Cunningham Graham

Published by Century, softcover

INTRODUCTION
Cunninghame Graham first visited one of the old Jesuit missions in 1871. He was struck by the decay. Two years later, he visited another when he was travelling through the northeastern Argentine province of Misiones. It was the feast of the Blessed Virgin, and as he arrived in the small town, troops óf white-clad Indian women and children, with flowers in their hands, were filing into the wooden church to the sound of bells.

Apart from some Argentine horsemen, there were few men in sight; most of the Indians had been killed in the war which the Paraguayan dictator Solano López had just lost against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. There was no priest to sing Mass, and an elderly Indian read some prayers from an old Book of Hours, pronouncing the Latin as if it had been his native Guarani. After the service, the congregation returned to the plaza where there were stalls selling food and drink. The Indians gave musical concerts, and the Argentine gauchos provided a dashing display of horsemanship.

It was an experience which deeply impressed Cunninghame Graham. Twenty years later he began his researches into the history of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay which led eventually to the publication of A Vanished Arcadia in 1901. The Paraguayan war (1865-70) which had just ended was, in effect, the final act of destruction of the missions following the expulsion of the Jesuits a century earlier in 1767. Cunninghame Graham was the last historian of the ..................