RIDE UP COUNTRY. 63 



As we were going into church, the priest bowed to us. 

 The service, which was at midday, was called a Missa 

 Cantata ; but the choral part consisted merely of a brass 

 band, which struck up dance music, with much drum 

 accompaniment, at the most solemn parts of the Liturgy. 

 After the Gospel and Creed, the priest gave a very good 

 little sermon on the Good Samaritan, with practical 

 directions as to entertaining strangers — I suppose with 

 special reference to us ; and I must repeat that, without 

 exception, this direction appears to be obeyed to the very 

 fullest extent, which I am afraid I could hardly say of our 

 own country. 



After service, we dropped into a shop to have some wine. 

 It turned out to be the house of the priest's father ; and the 

 " padre " immediately came from an inner room, asked us 

 to join his humble dinner, and gave us some more of the 

 wine, as we had praised it. Dinner ended, he led us off to 

 his own house, and made me rest in a very comfortable 

 palm-fibre {purity) hammock, which was stretched across 

 his study. He has a nice, though small, library of religious 

 books, and a few sacred pictures. In one corner stood a 

 cask of some especially good wine, which I need hardly say 

 he pressed upon us. We had heard that he was a very 

 devoted and excellent man, a widower, who had kept a 

 shop. On his wife's death he sold up his shop and went 

 away to college, leaving a little daughter, his only child, 

 with his mother, and in due course was sent back as priest 

 to his old home. He told us what a great struggle he had 

 had, and something of the work he had done among the 

 people for some years ; and we heard that when he had first 

 arrived, the people were very wild, and went to church with 

 their long knives and other weapons, brandishing them like 

 savages. Now they are as quiet as English people, and 



