marily as heretics: they were hunted down and persecuted, starved and tortured; bloodhounds were let loose against them; they were immured in dungeons; denied the commonest necessaries of life; the rack was brought into operation, and numbers perished in all varieties of agony. In some parts of the country, the neophytes who embraced the new faith were bound to a ten-years servitude to their ecclesiastical patrons, as a return for the privilege of becoming converts,—an original idea in the annals of proselytism,—that of serving a kind of industrial apprenticeship to the art and mystery of true Catholicism!
The old Spanish monks and priests were banished from Mexico at the revolution; but their successors, of Mexican birth, are only superior to them in unblushing profligacy, rapacity and extortion.
My attention was one day arrested by a young Indian woman, who entered the cathedral in a most supplicating guise, bringing in her hand all her worldly wealth—the poor pittance for which she had laboured for many weary months. After a long confession, and many doubts and fears, a bargain seemed to have been arranged between her and the
