166 THE CHURCH AND ITS CEREMONIES. 



that they are neither thoroughly understood nor remembered by the actors themselves in this 

 serious drama. 



After a sermon, comprising a salutatory discourse to the cross adorning the altar invoked 

 as an animate object capable of inflicting good or evil, rather than as the emblem of faith and a 

 brief detail of events during the early career of the Redeemer, a venerable looking cross was rever- 

 entially laid at foot of the platform on which the high altar stands. Commencing with the highest 

 in rank, one by one the clergy prostrated themselves before the relic, kneeling at two different 

 places in the nave before placing their lips upon it. Next, the archbishop removed the host 

 from the altar with much solemnity, conveying it through the nave and aisles under a canopy 

 of silver lace. He was preceded by a priest, who bore the insignia of his office a golden 

 crozier and a procession numbering hundreds of clergy and laity, carrying wax candles. The 

 congregation continued kneeling as the procession passed through their midst, beating their 

 breasts in concert with the noise of a rattle called "matraca" and the solemn dirge chanted by 

 the priests during their march. Even bells are prohibited after Thursday, and the matraca alone 

 is used. Returning to the front of the altar, the consecrated wafer was consumed amid a cloud 

 of incense ; and this, with additional music, ended the four hours' ceremonies of the morning. 



At night there was a torchlight procession from the church of San Francisco, in the Canada, 

 to the plaza, the clergy, including the archbishop and monks, the cucuruchos, and others specially 

 devout among the laity, taking part in it. They had images of the crucified Saviour, of all the 

 evangelists, many angels, Judas, the cock that witnessed against Peter, and his Satanic 

 Majesty himself, all as large as life. To accommodate a crowd of youthful singers, pupils of the 

 National Conservatory of Music, who were to greet the procession on its arrival, a stage sur- 

 mounted by a huge cross had been erected in the plaza. These juvenile musicians had "been 

 some time in training for the occasion ; and, in the stillness of the night, their voices penetrated 

 even to my distant scene of labor, on Santa Lucia. To a near spectator it was probably a rare 

 sight ; but from the hill, though aided by a strong moon and the light of a thousand torches, 

 there could only be distinguished a towering illuminated cross amid a dense, dark sea of human 

 forms. In the following year I was at Valparaiso, too busy with the mail for the United States 

 to think of church ceremonies ; and in 1852 in one of the provincial towns, of whose celebrations 

 an account is given in its proper place. 



SATURDAY. A heavy rain during the very early morning imparted a bright and cheerful look 

 to the dusty verdure surrounding the city, and vigorous freshness to the air. Higher in the 

 atmosphere the congealed moisture had fallen unchanged, and many a peak of the nearer cor- 

 dilleras, which, from its bleak sterility, had looked, oh, so hot ! for two or three months, had 

 been clad with its winter mantle. Apparently above, and at the very base of the eastern chain, 

 floated huge piles of cumuli, through whose interstices the sun poured a flood of golden light 

 over the city ; the sky to the north and west being, at the same time, of that intense blue which, 

 only the depths of ocean can rival. 



Service at the cathedral commenced by a procession of the priests through the aisles and nave. 

 Though but the day following the crucifixion, or second day, the church could not longer postpone 

 celebrating the resurrection of the Saviour. The altar was shrouded in darkness, the multitude 

 of tapers in the chandeliers near it being unlighted, and, though the edifice never possesses the 

 glare of our Protestant buildings without these adjuncts, there was now only a sombre and 

 mystic light, well suited to a mourning community. Had there been no parade of presenting, 

 on silver salvers, the half hundred or more articles composing the archbishop's robes for different 

 parts of the ritual, and two or three fancifully dressed priests to assist in putting them on and 

 taking them off every little while, and the stillness of the cathedral had only been broken by 

 the low and wailing strain of the organ, devotional feelings would have germinated even in the 

 soul of a heretic. But, with such constant changes of costume, the dancing round of priests in 

 their white "josey" gowns, the lighting, extinguishing, and shifting of candles from side to 

 side before the altar, and the incessant bobbing up and down of some one or other of the crowd 



