The Indian Elias Boudinot and other Cherokees have printed many essays and tracts in that tongue, but whether original or merely translated I do not know. The sermons of the native Protestant missionaries to their fellows were probably extempore addresses. At any rate, I have not seen any in manuscript or print. A volume of the kind exists, however, in manuscript, in the Library of the _Instituto Historico_ of Rio Janeiro, which it would be very desirable to have printed. It is the _Sermones e Exemplos em lengua Guarani_, by Nicolas Japuguay, cura of the Parish of San Francisco in 1727.[56] But when it is edited, let us hope that it will be a more favorable example of critical care than the _Crestomathia da Lingua Brasilica_, edited by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira Franca (Leipzig, 1859), which, according to Professor Hartt, is "badly arranged, carelessly edited, and disfigured by innumerable typographical errors."[57] A curious variety of religious literature is what are called the Passions, _Las Pasiones_, which are found among the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early period among the sodalities (_cofradias_), organized under the name of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume, called its Regulations (_Ordenanzas_), containing, among other matters, a series of invocations, founded on the history of the Passion of Christ. During Holy Week, certain members of the fraternity, called _fiscales_, gather in the church, around one of their number, who reads a sentence in a loud voice. The fiscales repeat it in a chanting tone, with a uniform and monotonous cadence. It is probable that these chants are the compositions of the Indians themselves. Dr. Berendt obtained several copies of these, some in the Chapaneca of Chiapas, and others in the Zoque of the Isthmus, which are now in my hands. Section 5. _Oratorical Literature._ The love of the American Indian for oratorical display has been commented on by almost all writers who have studied his disposition. Specimens of native eloquence have been introduced into school books, and declaimed by many an aspiring young Cicero. Most of them are, doubtless, as fictitious as Logan's celebrated speech, which was exalted by the great Jefferson almost to a level with the outbursts of Demosthenes, to be reduced again to very small proportions by the criticisms of Brantz Mayer.[58] In fact, in spite of all that has been said about the native oratory, we are in a very inadequate position to judge of it correctly, and this because we have no accurate reports in the original tongues of their speeches. Translations, more or less loose, more or less imaginary, we have in abundance; but, for critical purposes, they are simply worthless.