Perhaps the most famous shrine in all Brazil is in the far interior of the State of Bahia on the San Francisco River. It is the famous Lapa. The image has its shrine in a cave in a very remarkable geological formation. One hundred thousand people make pilgrimages to this shrine every year from all of the States in Brazil. The last Emperor himself made a visit to this shrine. From June to August of last year $20,000 was collected from the pilgrims. Our missionary, Jackson, met a man who had been on the way six months. It required him a year to make this trip. The same missionary saw a family from the State of Alagoas which had been on the journey six weeks. Dr. Z. C. Taylor says he passed through sections that had been almost depopulated because the men had sold out their homes, horses and cattle in order to seek a miracle in their favor at this same shrine. Fire destroyed the image in 1902. Protestants were accused of setting fire to it because a missionary was near at the time. (He was forty miles away.) In the controversy that arose the missionary noted that, inasmuch as the new image was sent by freight and not by ticket, it must be an idol and not a saint. Suffice it to say, that a new image was placed and the people are worshiping it with the same zeal with which they worshiped the old, even though the new one came by freight and the old one was supposed to have fallen from Heaven. It is believed to have miracle working power and to give great merit to one who makes the pilgrimage to it. In the daily paper called the "Provinca," published in Pernambuco, there was printed on August 23, 1910, the following telegram from the city of Rio, the capital of the Republic. "The Seculo (Century) of today announces that on St. Leopold street in Andarahy (a suburb of Rio) there was discovered a fountain of water in a hollow rock, in which a plebian found an image of a saint. "This image," adds the Seculo, "although in water, did not present the least vestige of humidity. The news of this curious discovery was immediately circulated, and there was a great pilgrimage, including a reporter of the Seculo, to this miraculous fountain in Andarahy." It is very probable that this telegram heralds the advent of a new shrine, because it is in this fashion that these so-called miracle-working shrines are brought into existence.