l62 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



comedias) all the income from which he turned over to it for the 

 care, maintenance, and comfort of the poor among the Indians. 



454. The Hospital of Los Desamparados (The Destitute) is run 

 by the friars and brethren of the blessed San Juan de Dios ; it is 

 rich and sumptuous. It has a revolving dumb-waiter into which 

 foundlings are dropped or put — they commonly call them children 

 of the church door — and these friars care for these orphaned children 

 and find women to nurse them and pay them out of the hospital's 

 revenues and the large daily charitable contributions which they get 

 from the city's various wards every day. 



455. The Hospital of La Concepcion was founded by Don Fer- 

 nando Cortes, Marques del Valle (and its patrons are the marquises 

 his descendants), for the care of the indigent sick and for the burial 

 both of them and of his descendants. He left directions that there 

 should be nuns on the one side and (monks?) on the other, to care 

 for the poor, for which purpose he left an annual income of 16,000 

 pesos. The church is very fine and gives promise of being still more 

 so. He left his successors some 20,000 pesos income to act as patrons, 

 with the provision that they should take no part in the administration 

 of the income for the hospital and the poor ; for that, he named 

 trustees (administradores) and chaplains of the poor, giving them 

 the major part of the income from good farms in Mexico; included 

 in this is the income derived from the theatrical playhouse situated 

 back of the convent of San Augustin. 



456. The Hospital and Insane Asylum of San Hipolito is one of 

 the finest and wealthiest in the Indies. Every year when the fleets 

 coming from Spain arrive at Vera Cruz, they send down 200 mules 

 loaded with biscuit, delicacies, and sweets, which they keep leaving 

 on the route at the posting houses for the use and benefit of the 

 poor invalids and of all those at the harbor and particularly the 

 cachupines, as they call recent arrivals from Spain in that kingdom ; 

 in Peru and the Spanish Main they call them chapetones. They put 

 them on muleback and transport them for the love of God ; they pro- 

 vide them with good care and with delicacies ; as for those in good 

 health they arrange for them to work and be of service. They, pro- 

 vide such great relief that without it many poor people would perish 

 and die, and so it is a most blessed institution and project. The 

 brethren who conduct it wear a dark gray habit like those of the 

 General Hospital of this capital. They are called Brethren of 

 Huaxtepec because it was first established there, built by Juan Alvarez, 

 grand servant of God, its founder, a native of Ayamonte. 



