offer, on the part of the Indians, to assist in the construction of a chapel, an undertaking which, by the means of the wood of an excellent quality the country afforded, was executed on a large scale. The chapel having been beautified and adorned in a manner which, in a similar situation, surpassed every reasonable conjecture, and opened for divine worship, Bezares was utterly negligent of his own immediate interests. He ceded to the Indians, without binding them by any agreement, the implements of husbandry he had brought with him, and supplied them with seeds for the esculent crops that might enable them to secure to themselves a comfortable subsistence, on which the ulterior arrangements were to depend. These good offices, and the affability of their benefactor, drew down the acclamations of all: they made him a voluntary tender of their services; and their loud expressions of gratitude penetrated to the mountains, whence many of those who inhabited them like wild beasts having been allured, partook of the labours, and recognized the God who had already been banished from their remembrance.
Enamoured with the extent and fecundity of this unexplored country, and highly flattered by so propitious a commencement, Bezares resolved to make a further sacrifice of his property, and was solely deterred by the difficulty of the access, which was such, that if the mule on which he was mounted succeeded in penetrating, it was not without infinite trouble and perplexity, at the same time that the novelty of the sight occasioned the Indians of Chicoplaya to flee, as if they had encountered a ferocious beast. Leaving them at length to prosecute their labours, he retrograded on foot in search of a track by which the herds and flocks might be con-
ducted;
