On January 31st and February 1st the people prepare for Candlemas, which takes place on the 2nd. They are taught by the priest that on this day the children who have died without baptism can get a little light. It is the feast of the mothers, and the priests tell the people how necessary it is to come to church with their candles. “Do not be like so many pieces of stick; come and bring your candles, and think of your poor dead children awaiting your candles to get some light!” “So the next day the poor mothers come with their candles of all sorts and sizes. Long candles, short candles, thin candles, thick candles. What a mine of wealth for the priests the sale of this holy (!) grease must be! “May God light the candle of each life in order that some day someone who reads this may be able to show the Bolivian Bairns the way to Heaven. Only the light that Christ gives is of any service to Him, and to those who ‘sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.’” The Bolivian Indians do not have many children, as the poor mites, through neglect and ill-treatment, die in hundreds every year, most of them under two years of age. Another reason why Indians have such small families is that when the children grow up to be twelve or thirteen years of age they marry and have homes of their own. Mr and Mrs Will Payne did some splendid pioneer work amongst these people before the liberty of preaching the Gospel was proclaimed in the Republic. They suffered much persecution at the hands of the Roman Catholics, but now missionary work can go forward without hindrance, and to-day the South American Missionary Society is at work in Southern Bolivia, while the Bolivian Indian Mission is ministering to the Quechua-speaking remnant of the bygone Inca race. In writing of the children, one of the missionaries in San Pedro says of the school work:-- “The school is open to all, and boys and girls of the white and half-caste classes attend. (The Indians do not live in the town.) The school opens every morning with the singing of a hymn, a Scripture lesson and prayer, in all of which great interest is taken. Mother earth constitutes the floor. The walls are of mud, and the ceiling is of a rough thatching of rushes. For years the room served as a cook-house, and knew neither chimney nor window, nor any other means of exit for the smoke. “Nowadays two large holes in the wall, one shuttered, the other not, admit light which reveals a blackness that water cannot cleanse. Two or three geography maps gravely endeavour to hide the sooty walls, and, aided by three mud seats that traverse the room, humbly announce that this is Ch’iquipampa School-house.” Outside, mounted upon a pole which stands in the centre of the “estancia” courtyard, is the school bell. For nearly a century it hung in the belfry of a Roman Catholic chapel away out among the Bolivian mountains. But it, too, has felt the impulse of modernism, and now follows a reformed calling.