ut Indian women when they left the churches on their return.
They were generally very plain, to say the least of it. Round their
waists and over their under-dress they pass a piece of silk, which is
wrapped tight round the person. The result is as nearly as possible
the opposite to the effect produced by a crinoline.

[Sidenote: Cigar making.]

I have returned from a very hot drive to visit a sugar refinery and a
cigar manufactory. I saw little to interest at the former, except the
process of making chocolate by mixing cocoa, cinnamon, and sugar. At
the latter, some 8,000 girls were employed, not very pretty, but
cheerful-looking. A skilful worker can make 200 a day, so that these
young ladies can poison mankind to the tune of 1,600,000 cigars a day.

[Sidenote: The cathedral.]

_Sunday, January 27th.--Ten A.M._--In my early morning's walk I again
visited the churches, which were in greater activity than yesterday.
In the cathedral I came in for a sermon which began 'Illustrissimo
Senor' so I suppose the Archbishop was present, and probably had me in
his eye. I could understand very little, so I did not stay it out. It
was delivered without notes (having evidently been learnt by heart),
in rather a monotonous way; with a sort of little action, all confined
to a slight movement of the hands and flipping of the fingers.... The
Archbishop is, I am told, very bigoted. He did not come to dinner
yesterday (a grand full-dress dinner given in my honour), and some say
it was because of my being a heretic. I take it I was in error
yesterday in speaking of the Spanish system of compelling conformity
of belief as necessarily beginning in harshness. I fancy the monks
have won over the simple Indians here to a great extent by gentle
methods. They protect them, and manage their affairs, and know all
their secrets through the confessional, and amuse them with no end of
feast-days, and gewgaws, and puerile ceremonies. The natives seem to
have a great deal of our dear old French Canadian _habitans_ about
them, only in a more sublime stage of infantine simplicity.

[Sidenote: A pueblo.]

_January 28th._--I drove this morning to a village (_pueblo_) about
seven miles off, starting at 5.30. The weather nice and cool. The
country very rich. The cottages of bamboo and leaves, and all raised
on bamboo posts o