Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/56

Rh considerable. Fevers are the chief cause of this mortality. Small pox is rare, as vaccination is generally practised by the medical men, (if such they may be called.) There is not, in fact, a single individual in the place, who has the slightest knowledge of medicine; and if an inhabitant be taken ill, nature has to struggle not only with the disease, but with a bad climate and an ignorant quack; it need not therefore, excite surprise that she often fails.

There do not appear to be any books whatever in the place, excepting a few mass books, and these are little used. The priest, a sottish being, is generally despised, and the church greatly neglected. The inhabitants appear destitute of all religious feeling. A copy of the Scriptures is probably not to be met with in Gualan, nor are they permitted to be sold or distributed without the notes of the church. There is a very considerable degree of intolerance mixed with this neglect of every thing divine. I had with me a number of the “Ocios,” (a periodical published by the Spanish emigrants in London,) which contained a paper in favour of religious toleration. I read a part of it aloud, but was immediately stopped with assurances that it could never be thus in America: they evidently disliked the principle. Yet these are republicans!