The fault is in the permission of these idolatrous rites, before the mock image of another image; although it may perhaps be urged, that as the Catholic is the "blending of the rituals of many nations," there is no harm in these innocent Indians being allowed to mix up the relics of the worship of their fathers, so long as the whole service is offered in honor of the ever living God.
During the morning, I climbed to the top of the church tower, through a swarm of Indians, who were hived in a set of mud-floored rooms around the inner court, and the upper portion of the sacred edifice, which they were allowed to occupy as a sort of public caravanserai during the period of their pilgrimage. Such masses of dirt, filth, and personal impurity, it is difficult even to imagine; and I am happy to say, that with the exception of the festival at Guadalupe, it was the only exhibition of the sort that I saw of the Indians while in Mexico.
But I was repaid for my disgust on reaching the top of the church tower. The view was magnificent, as is, indeed, almost, every prospect from the heights in this valley. The church stands alone, on the bleak unsheltered side of a mountain. Behind it the steeps rise rapidly, with deep glens descending from them, watered by many streams, and spanned, in wild and solitary grandeur, by a lofty aqueduct of fifty arches. But to the east lay the lovely valley—its plain—its silvery lakes—and turreted city nestling on its borders; while, far in the distance, more than fifty miles away, rose the gray volcanoes, capped with their eternal snows and clouds.
I cannot conclude an account of this Indian scene, without offering my testimony in favor of the temper and temperance of the natives. In all the scenes of that day, spent among so many thousand Indians, I saw but three or four at all intoxicated. There was neither fighting, nor quarrelling; but all seem to have met together for the purpose of an annual frolic, and all carried it out in that pleasant spirit. The most tipsy man in the crowd was the Corregidor—an old, lazy, leather-breeched savage, who trotted among the multitude all day long, lecturing the Indians on sobriety and good behavior. It was his misfortune, however, that the duties of his station carried him more frequently to the pulque shops than elsewhere, nor was he allowed to quit them without a parting glass, to which he was pressed by the numerous friends with whom all great men are afflicted. I left him hiccuping a lesson, and winking his eyes very slowly at an old Indian; who, having been his predecessor in office, had fallen into disgrace from the potency of pulque. It was the fatal misfortune of all the Corregidors!
I told you, in the previous part of these letters, that the true Virgin had been removed to the Cathedral in Mexico; and that she stands in that temple on her shrine of silver, enjoying the title to three petticoats embroidered with pearls, diamonds and emeralds.
If she possesses the power to cure the maladies of others, she has not, alas! the skill to heal her own. She is in a most dilapidated condition!
