Both in Mexico and in Peru young girls were consecrated to a religious life, but this consecration was sometimes only temporary; a certain proportion of the Peruvian nuns being drafted off into the harem of the Inca. Acosta, describing this consecration of virgins, is again impressed with the abilities of the devil. Since, he observes, the religious life is so pleasing in the eyes of God, the father of lies has contrived, not only to imitate it, but to cause his ministers to be distinguished in austerity and regularity. Thus in Peru there were many convents for girls, who were placed under the tuition of old women whom they called Mamaconas. Indoctrinated by the Mamaconas in "various things necessary for human life, and in the rites and ceremonies of their gods," they were removed, after they had attained fourteen years, either to the sanctuaries where they preserved a perpetual virginity, or to be sacrificed in some religious ceremonial, or to become wives and mistresses of the Inca and his friends. The consecration of these damsels was not, as usual in such cases, voluntary on their part, but the same idea of merit inspired the gift on the part of those who made it. For, while the surrender of female children to the monastery was compulsory when demanded by an officer named the "Appopanaca," yet "many offered their girls of their own free will, it appearing to them that they gained great merit, inasmuch as they were sacrificed for the Inca." If any of the older nuns, who presided over the children, had sinned against her honor, she was invariably buried alive or subjected to some other cruel death. "In Mexico," continues the pious Jesuit, "the devil also found his own kind of nuns, although the profession did not last more than one year." As has been said, there were two houses, one for men and another for women. Like the monks, the nuns also wore a distinctive costume, and dressed their hair in a distinctive fashion. Like them, they had manual labor to perform; like them, they rose at midnight for matins. They had their abbesses, who occupied them in making robes for the adornment of the idols. They also had their penance, in which they cut themselves in the points of the ears. They lived with honor and circumspection, and any delinquency, even the smallest, was punished with death; for they said that the sinner had violated the honor of their god (H. I., b. 5, ch. 15).