VIRGIN OF REMEDIOS. 147 
The fault is in the permission of these idolatrous rites, before the mock 
image of another image ; although it may perhaps be urged, that as the 
Catholic is the " blending of the rituals of many nations," there is no 
harm in these innocent Indians being allowed to mix up the relics of the 
worship of their fathers, so long as the whole service is offered in honor 
of the ever living God. 
During the morning, I climbed to the top of the church tower, through 
a swarm of Indians, who were hived in a set of mud-floored rooms around 
the inner court, and the upper portion of the sacred edifice, which they 
were allowed to occupy as a sort of public caravanserai during the 
period of their pilgrimage. Such masses of dirt, filth, and personal 
impurity, it is difficult even to imagine ; and I am happy to say, that 
with the exception of the festival at Guadalupe, it was the only exhibi- 
tion of the sort that I saw of the Indians while in Mexico. 
But I was repaid for my disgust on reaching the top of the church 
tower. The view was magnificent, as is, indeed, almost every prospect 
from the heights in this valley. The church stands alone, on the bleak 
unsheltered side of a mountain. Behind it the steeps rise rapidly, with 
deep glens descending from them, watered by many streams, and span- 
ned, in wild and solitary grandeur, by a lofty aqueduct of fifty arches. 
But to the east lay the lovely valley — its plain — its silvery lakes — and 
turreted city nestling on its borders ; while, far in the distance, more than 
forty miles away, rose the gray volcanoes, capped with their eternal snows 
and clouds. 
I cannot conclude an account of this Indian scene, without offering my 
testimony in favor of the temper and temperance of the natives. In all 
the scenes of that day, spent among so many thousand Indians, I saw but 
three or four at all intoxicated. There was neither fighting, nor quar- 
relling ', but all seem to have met together for the purpose of an annual 
frolic, and all carried it out in that pleasant spirit. The most tipsy 
man in the crowd was the Corregidor — an old, lazy, leather-breeched 
savage, who trotted among the multitude all day long, lecturing the In- 
dians 'on sobriety and good behavior. It was his misfortune, however, 
that the duties of his station carried him more frequently to the pulque 
shops than elsewhere, nor was he allowed to quit them without a parting 
glass, to which he was pressed by the numerous friends with whom all 
great men are afflicted. I left him hiccuping a lesson, and winking his 
eyes very slowly at an old Indian ; who, having been his predecessor in 
office, had fallen into disgrace from the potency of jpulque. It was the 
fatal misfortune of all the Corregidors ! 
I told you, in the previous part of these letters, that the true Virgin had 
been removed to the Cathedral in Mexico ; and that she stands in that 
temple on her shrine of silver, enjoying the title to three petticoats em- 
broidered with pearls, diamonds and emeralds. 
If she possesses the power to cure the maladies of others, she has not, 
alas ! the skill to heal her own. She is in a most dilapidated condition ! 
11 
