Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/299

Rh, as upon the mildness and humanity of his master. If a robbery be committed, and the author remains undiscovered, the proprietor of the hacienda orders all whom he has reason to suspect of being concerned in it, to leave the estate, and if the order be not complied with instantly, sets fire to the huts and maize of the suspected, who are then driven out by force. This is the general kind of punishment, and there is no appeal.

To each of these haciendas is appended a small chapel or Oratorio de la Misa, where a priest occasionally performs the Romish service; a bell is rung the previous night, and by an early hour on the following morning, a good congregation is generally collected.

The submission of the Indian population to their spiritual instructersinstructors [sic], knows no bounds. Every one who passed the priest, when walking with us in the fields bent for his blessing, and received his hand upon their heads, with the deepest humility; the relatives of one poor woman whom he visited when sick, actually placed flowers and branches along the path he had to tread to reach her hut, which ceremony he told us, was in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. From whom but from their pastors, can they have received such impious lessons? This man was coarse, vulgar, and stupidly ignorant,