Download or read book Lost Cities of Paraguay written by Clement J. McNaspy and published by Chicago : Loyola University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For one brief shining hour there existed in the jungles of what is now Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, a marvelous civilization that stands today only in near-forgotten though still eloquent ruins. These were the Thirty Cities of the so-called "Jesuit Reductions", safe havens into which Jesuit missioners gathered primitive Indians to protect them from Portuguese slave traders and the depredations of the Spanish colonists. In a fantastically short time, the talents of these previously untrained people flowered into the building of a remarkable "world" of beauty and grace almost beyond belief, a world Voltaire called "in some way the triumph of humanity" and Chesterton called "a Paradise in Paraguay". Were it not for the mute testimony of the delicately carved statues and the ruins of noble churches, the whole story might seem beyond belief.