Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/591

Rh wharf, who has learned to talk English very fluently. He commenced by saying, "What a great change has taken place since the Yankees first landed on our shores! When you Yankees first landed, I, with the rest of my countrymen and women, felt it a blessing to rise in arms against you, and patriotically cut the throat of every Yankee in the country. Now, we deeply regret the Yankees' departure. We told him that our mission to Mexico has been accomplished with credit to ourselves and, we hope, with honor to our government; that we like Mexico, and we believe that it could be made one of the richest and best fruit-growing countries on the Pacific coast. We found all kinds of fruit growing wild along the National Road, and some of the finest fields of grain we ever saw; and we hope that the day may not be far distant when there will be a railroad from Vera Cruz to the capital, and machine-shops and other manufactories spring up all over their country, and civilization, national reform, and morals be ordered, and a self-government be established. Then, and not until then, prosperity, happiness, and confidence will prevail. But to accomplish this event you will have to break up your priest and monk rule; you must first take politics out of your religion, and religion out of politics, and let the people rule; you must guarantee life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to every living being in your country; you must guarantee religious liberty, and worship God according to their own belief

He said that was all good as far as it went; that he was a Catholic, and believed all good Catholics would go straight to heaven when they die, for they have had their purgatory in this world. All other religion or believers will go to hell.

We told him that we were not all Catholics, but we believed in God and his Son, and we believed in carrying out and obeying God's laws, and by so doing we will stand as good a chance to enter the kingdom of heaven as some of the Catholics who worship images made out of wood and stone. To this he straightened himself up and cast his eyes towards heaven and stamped his feet on the deck, saying, "No, never,