THE MOJOS INDIANS. 
191 
tlie stillness that I should have taken the village to he deserted during 
the rest of the day, but for some groups of childrcu out at play. 
Gorgeous festivals and processions were counted, as I have already, 
explained, among the principal factors of a successful catechese ; and at 
the present day, not only in Bolivia hut all over South America, they are 
tlie shows which electrify the whole population. 
In the North of Eui-ope at least, one cannot easily form an , adequate 
notion of the • strange mixture of bigotry, childish delight in shows, 
and inclination to debauchery, which impels both high and low. to 
take part in them.* 
In the Pueblos, however, these spectacles derive a. distinctive cha- 
racter from the prevailing Indian element, which strongly contra.sts, 
in solemn dignity and a certain savageness, with the more cliildish, 
raonkey-lilie conception of the negro-mulatto and mestizo population 
of the cities. 
In the Pueblo of Exaltacion de la Santa Cruz, where several high 
wooden crosses are erected in different places, probably in honour of 
its name, a dozen of the sword-dancers (macheteiros), on the day of 
the consecration of a church, went singing and dancing and brandishing 
their broad knives and wooden swords, from cross to cross, headed by 
their chieftain, who carried a heavy silver cross, and folloAved by 
the whole tiibc. They wore dazzling white camisetas, rattling stag’s 
claws on their knuckles, and a fanciful head-gear composed of the 
long tail-feathers of the araras and of yellow and red toucan’s breasts. 
At every cross, and before the altars of the church, they performed 
* In some towns in tlie interior of Brazil, in addition to the scapegraces dressed 
as Turks, hangmen and Homan soldiers, an actress takes the part of Mary Magdalene 
in the Good Eriday procession. Kneeling on a sort of idchly-ornanionted pedestal 
(called audor), carried by six men, with dishevelled hair and inflamed eyes, she fills the 
air w'itli her lamentations and screams. The public, among whom unrepenting Mag- 
dalenes usually ai’e very numerous, are seized with holy horror ; even tears have been 
seen to flow here and there ; but, on the whole, it is a wwetched exhibition, which gives 
rise to scandals of every kind. At Barbacena, a little tow'n in Minas Gerges that enjoys 
the worst of reputations as to the morals of its inhahitants, such of the women, 
both married and unmaiTied, as have to reproach themselves for any offence, on a 
certain day w!ilk to a chapel boasting a particularly merciful image of the Virgin, 
bare down to their girdles, with hair loose, and carrying heavy stones on thch heads. 
Even persons of the highest rank ai'e obliged to comply with local habits in these 
matters ; and at Eio, on Oorpus-Christi day, the Emjmror Dom Pedro II., bareheaded 
tor two lulu's, accompanies the procession, which is preceded by St. George, a hideoxis 
doll of life-size, tied on a horse, — ^mutih to the disgust of his sons-in-law, who also 
have to submit to the torture, if they happen to bo there at tho time. 
