With a few exceptions these houses were empty, for the population gather only three or four times in the course of the year, at certain festival seasons. Generally they are scattered about in their different sitios, attending to their plantations. But at these fêtes they assemble to the number of several hundred, all the dwellings are crowded with families, and the square in the centre is cleared of grass, swept and garnished for their evening dances. Such festivities last for ten days or a fortnight; then they all disperse to their working life again. At this time there are not more than thirty or forty persons in the village. The most interesting object we saw was their church, which stands at the head of the square, and was built entirely by the Indians themselves. It is quite a large structure, capable of holding an assembly of five or six hundred persons. The walls are of mud, very neatly finished inside, and painted in colors made by the Indians from the bark, roots, and fruits of certain trees, and also from a particular kind of clay. The front part of the church is wholly unfurnished, except for the rough wooden font standing just within the door. But the farther end is partitioned off to make a neat chancel, within which several steps lead up to the altar and niche above, where is placed the rude image of the Mother and the Child. Of course the architecture and the ornaments are of the coarsest description; the painting consists only of stripes or lines of blue, red, and yellow, with here and there an attempt at a star or a diamond, or a row of scalloping; but there is something touching in the idea that these poor, uneducated people of the forest have cared to build themselves a temple with their own hands, lavishing upon it such ideas of beauty and taste as they have, and bringing at least their best to their humble altar. None of our city churches, on which millions have been expended, have power to move one like this church, the loving work of the worshippers themselves, with its mud walls so coarsely painted, its wooden cross before the door, and little thatched belfry at one side. It is sad that these people, with so much religious sensibility, are not provided with any regular service. At long intervals a priest, on his round of visitations, makes his way to them, but, except on such rare occasions, they have no one to administer the rites of burial or baptism, or to give religious instruction to them or to their children. And yet their church was faultlessly clean, the mud floor was strewn with fresh green leaves, and everything about the building showed it to be the object of solicitude and care. Their houses were very neat, and they themselves were decently dressed in the invariable costume of the civilized Indian,—the men in trousers and white cotton shirts, the women in calico petticoats, with short, loose chemises, either of cotton or calico, and their long, thick