"'Their dwellings in the cities are generally wanting in all the requirements of health and comfort, and consist mostly of rooms on the ground-floor, without proper light or ventilation, often with but the single opening for entrance. In such houses there is rarely anything answering to the civilized idea of a bed, the occupants sleeping on a mat, skin, or blanket, on the dirt floor. There are no chairs or tables. There is no fireplace or chimney, and few or no changes of raiment; no washing apparatus or soap, and in fact no furniture whatever, except a flat stone with a stone roller to grind their corn, and a variety of earthen vessels to hold their food and drink, and for cooking, which is generally done over a small fire within a circle of stones outside, and in front of the main entrance to the dwelling. "'Their principal food is _tortillas_,--a sort of mush made of soaked and hand-ground Indian corn, rolled thin, and then slightly baked over a slow fire. Another staple of diet is boiled beans (_frijoles_). Meat is seldom used by laborers; but when it is attainable, every part of the animal is eaten. Should one be so fortunate as to have anything else to eat, the _tortilla_ serves as plates, after which service the plates are eaten. When their simple needs are thus satisfied,' says this observing traveller, 'the surplus earnings find their way into the pockets of the pulque or lottery-ticket sellers, or into the greedy hands of the almost omnipresent priest.' "These lotteries are, we are told, operated by the Church, and form one of its never-failing sources of income, proving even more profitable than the sale of indulgences. "The idolatrous instinct, inherited from far-off Aztec ancestors, decidedly inclines the native Mexican to a worship that has its pictures and images, and its bowings before the Virgin and countless hosts of saints, and the priest finds him an easy prey. "'While we were in the country,' says Ballou, 'a bull-fight was given in one of the large cities on a Sunday, as a benefit towards paying for a new altar-rail to be placed in one of the Romish churches.' "Religious fanaticism takes root in all classes in Mexico, even among the very highest in the land. It is recorded of the Emperor Maximilian--a man of elegant manners, and of much culture and refinement--that he walked barefoot on a day of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadaloupe,--distant some two or three miles from the city of Mexico, over a dusty, disagreeable road. "It is but fair to add, in conclusion," said Leon Starr, "that it is asserted of the cultivated classes of Mexico that they are not at all in sympathy with the extortions and other irregularities of their priesthood." With these interesting statistics ended the last effort of the New Koshare to combine improvement and entertainment.