As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions comparable to the tendency in the United States which is so curious an indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to conceive Brazilian reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable example of serious adoption of a new faith is found in the extreme South, where the principles of August Comte have taken root, and the _riograndense_ of the educated ruling class is generally a Comtist. In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion of Roman Catholic churches to the population is remarkably large, particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder sister, Olinda. That they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element, for here as in all other parts of the world where he has been taken the negro is a fervent admirer of almost any kind of religion. It is the swarming coloured people of Bahia, crowded in the cobble-paved, half-lighted rookeries of the lower town and the tilted streets leading to the upper town, who make it possible to keep open the doors of that city’s four hundred churches. In these centres all the many saints’ days are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a simple faith in “white magic” survive; here that the ceremonies of All Hallowe’en are performed by maids of the sertão, and spells invoked. St. John’s is one of the popular days, with its legends and traditional celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion as youth of Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves and flowers, go down to the river banks to wash, singing as they go, because as the verse says: “Nessa noite é benta a agua. Pará tudo tem virtudes.” Fires are lighted outside each house in homage to St. John, and at these green corn is roasted—the traditional _milho assado na fogueira_. Over the hot ashes of these fires the faithful walk barefoot without being burnt.... On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart, and girls try to discover their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is not the only aider of candidates for matrimony—there is “São Gonçalvo,” a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint is quoted by Pereira da Costa in his _Folklore Pernambucano_ and begins: “Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm binder, tie him who wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder the steps of Fulano as with a strong cage....” St. Raymund is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed prayer of noted efficiency is addressed to him; translated freely it runs: