Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/165

Rh that they have hardly the power to do so after being baptised, regarding the ceremony of baptism as a sort of spell which could not be broken. Occasionally, however, they overcome all imaginary and real obstacles and effect their escape. In such cases, the runaway is immediately pursued, and as it is always known to which tribe he belongs, and as, owing to the enmity subsisting among the tribes, he will not be received by another, he is almost always found and surrendered to the pursuers by his pusillanimous countrymen. When brought back to the mission he is always first flogged and then has an iron clog attached to his legs, which has the effect of preventing his running away and marking him out, in terrorem, to others."

Additional testimony in regard to the evil practices of the Mexican padres may be found in the delightful volumes of Madame Calderon de la Barca, entitled "Life in Mexico," and published in 1842. "Alas!"—exclaims this sprightly lady,—speaking of the wholesome reforms introduced by the viceroy Revilla-Gigedo among the Mexican monks,—"alas! could his excellency have lived to these our degenerate days, and beheld certain monks, of a certain order, drinking pulque and otherwise disporting themselves;—nay, seen one, as we but just now did from our window, strolling along the street by lamp-light, with an Indian girl tucked under his arm!"

The author of this slight but significant passage—an American lady of the highest character and wife of the first minister sent by Spain to Mexico,—cannot be flippantly contradicted by critics who would impute to her either prejudice or ignorance.

Zavala, in his History of the Revolutions of Mexico from 1808 to 1830, sketches briefly and forcibly some of the earlier features of ecclesiastical control in his country. As he was a native and a Catholic, he will not be accused of injustice to a church which he endeavored to fasten on the nation by his adherence to the constitution which made the Catholic faith the exclusive religion of the land. "They created missionaries," says he, "who, by the aid of the soldiery, made prodigious proselytes.******* They prepared catechisms and small formularies in the language of the natives, not for the perusal of the Indians, who could not read, but in order to repeat them in their pulpits and teach them by rote. There was not a single translation of the sacred volume in any idiom of the country, and there was not an elementary work containing the principles of their faith. But how could such works