Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/438

424 up to the belfrey, proceeded to drink it and ring the bells in our honor, as we drove off for Santa Anna again.

Among the decorations of this primitive church, are several effigies and pictures of Christ, of a character so utterly revolting as to fairly make one sick. It is alleged in explanation, that the Indians required very vivid illustrations, to excite their imagination and fix religious impressions in their minds. These ought to fetch them. In one chapel there is a full-sized effigy of Christ upon the cross. His head is covered with an enormous shock wig of brown-red hair, the eyes, mouth, and nose discharging blood, wounds and bruises on every limb and feature, and the agony and pallor of the dying struggle so fearfully counterfeited as to produce, in my mind at least, a sense of loathing and nausea almost uncontrollable. I would as soon think of going to a slaughter-house to worship the All-Merciful God who created the Heaven and the Earth, and made man in his own image and a little lower than the Angels, as to that chamber of horrors, in the first Christian church erected on the American Continent.

There are some old skulls lying about the church, and the Californians put two of them into the shawl which Mr. Gliddon was carrying. He did not discover the trick for some time, and when he did so he restored them to their place with the quiet remark, that as the superintendent of trains on the railway, he had been carrying so many "dead-heads" of late, that he did not notice the presence of one or two, more or less, unless his attention was specialy drawn to them. We got back to Santa Anna at 6, and returned to Puebla to dinner.