There is no missionary at Esmeralda: the monk appointed to celebrate mass here lives in Santa Barbara, some 50 leagues away. To come upstream takes him four days and he only appears five or six times a year. An old soldier welcomed us in a friendly way; he took us for Catalan shopkeepers come to trade with the missions. When he saw our wads of paper for drying plants he laughed at our naive ignorance: 'You have come to a land where nobody is going to buy such a thing. Here few write. We use dried maize, banana and vijaho (heliconia) leaves, as you do paper in Europe, to wrap up small objects like needles, hooks and other things you have to look after carefully. This old soldier was both the civil and spiritual authority. He taught children, if not the catechism, then at least how to say the rosary, and he tolled the bells as a hobby. Sometimes he used the sacristan's stick in ways that did not amuse the Indians.