Nearly two hundred Indians crowded into the church to mass, and went through the service with evident devotion. There are no more sincere Catholics in the world than the Indians, though, as I have said, they are apt to keep up some of their old rites in holes and corners. The administradors did not trouble themselves to attend mass, but went on posting up their books just outside the church-door; in this, as in a great many other little matters, showing their contempt for the brown men, and adding something every day to the feeling of dislike they are regarded with. We speak of the Indians still keeping up their ancient superstitious rites in secret, as we often heard it said so in Mexico, though we ourselves never saw anything of it. The Abbé Clavigero, who wrote in the last century, declares the charge to be untrue, except perhaps in a few isolated cases. “The few examples of idolatry,” he says, “which can be produced are partly excusable; since it is not to be wondered at that rude uncultured men should not be able to distinguish the idolatrous worship of a rough figure of wood or stone from that which is rightly paid to the holy images.” (There are people who would quite agree with the good Abbé that the distinction is rather a difficult one to make.) “But how often has prejudice against them declared things to be idols which were really images of the saints, though shapeless ones! In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the mystery of the Holy Nativity.” A good illustration of the wholesale way in which the early Catholic missionaries went about the work of conversion is given in a remark of Clavigero’s. There is one part of the order of baptism which proceeds thus: “Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of the person to be baptized, &c.” The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of the requisite material for their crowds of converts.