e speak of the Indians still keeping up their ancient superstitious
rites in secret, as we often heard it said so in Mexico, though we
ourselves never saw anything of it. The Abbe Clavigero, who wrote in
the last century, declares the charge to be untrue, except perhaps in a
few isolated cases. "The few examples of idolatry," he says, "which can
be produced are partly excusable; since it is not to be wondered at
that rude uncultured men should not be able to distinguish the
idolatrous worship of a rough figure of wood or stone from that which
is rightly paid to the holy images." (There are people who would quite
agree with the good Abbe that the distinction is rather a difficult one
to make.) "But how often has prejudice against them declared things to
be idols which were really images of the saints, though shapeless ones!
In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be
idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the
mystery of the Holy Nativity."

A good illustration of the wholesale way in which the early Catholic
missionaries went about the work of conversion is given in a remark of
Clavigero's. There is one part of the order of baptism which proceeds
thus: "Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his
mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of
the person to be baptized, &c." The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had
to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of
the requisite material for their crowds of converts.

After mass we rode out to a mound that had attracted our attention a
day or two before, and which proved to be a fort or temple, or probably
both combined. There were no remains to be found there except the usual
fragments of pottery and obsidian. Then we returned to the hacienda to
say good-bye to our friends there, before starting on our journey back
to Mexico. All the population were hard at work amusing themselves, and
the shop was doing a roaring trade in glasses of aguardiente. The
Indian who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monte
bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground
solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a
crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him,
silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their
stakes which lay on the ground before the banker. Other parties were
busy at the sa