183L] 
illO DE JANEIRO. 
51 
diaiis to the Christian faith ; and for this purpose they have been 
plentifully provided with churches, convents, and colleges, all am- 
ply endowed by the government of the mother country from 
coffers which were supphed from the colony itself ; the bowels 
of whose territory were teeming with treasures, which they were 
forbid to touch on pain of death. But whatever might have been 
the zeal and fidelity of their predecessors, a portion of the mem- 
bers of the clerical body now resident at Rio, evidently prefer the 
ease and luxury of a monastic life, to the labours and privations 
attending the office of a missionary. If a native should come to 
them and pay for a prayer or a shrift, he would no doubt be ac- 
commodated. But they have no idea of carrying out such pre-- 
cious goods to scatter gratis in the wilderness ! 
In alluding to the subject in a former part of this chapter, we 
intimated that they often winked at transgressions of the lower 
orders, most of whom are said to be very revengeful. As an 
illustration of that remark, we shall here record the following 
incident which occurred at Rio, and was related to us by an eye- 
witness of the facts. A murder was committed under circum' 
stances pecuharly aggravating. The assassin, closely pursued by 
the relatives of the deceased and the officers of justice, sought 
shelter from the threatening arm of the civil law beneath what 
proved, at least in this instance, the more powerful arm of the eccle- 
siastical law. Having attained the sanctuary which is ever found 
beneath the vaulted roof of a religious edifice, the murderer, his 
hands still reeking with blood, kneeled and most piously invoked 
the protection of the saint to whom the church had been dedi- 
cated. As a matter of superstition, the pursuit was abandoned 
for the moment ; which allowed the culprit time to make his es- 
cape, after paying the priest, the immediate representative and 
accounting agent of the saint to whom the church belongedy 
the amount exacted for his protection, and the preservation of 
his life. 
Indeed, the influence which such drones in the community ex- 
ercise over the poorer orders of the flock, is almost incredible. 
Their deceptions and religious exactions, and the ingenious meth- 
ods frequently adopted to carry on their systems of extortion, are 
often amusing, and always instructive, as affording to the curious- 
sufficient data, within a very short compass, from which to draw » 
D-2 
