Mother loves to deck her little one with necklaces, only I do not think we should say they were pretty, for they are made either of teeth or seeds. If you want to make an Indian woman your friend, nothing will win her friendship quicker than a present of a bead necklace to her little child. Then no Indian mother thinks her little one’s toilet is complete until she is painted red, though I do not suppose we should think her at all beautiful. Girls soon begin to help their mothers in various ways, by looking after the smaller ones, netting hammocks, making pottery, spinning cotton, and learning to cultivate the fields and to cook. But “the children’s souls, which God is calling Sunward, spin on blindly in the dark.” CHAPTER III BLOSSOM BABIES Leaving our little Indian friends, we now make our way through the State of Sao Paulo, in South-Eastern Brazil, to the city of the same name, which means “St Paul.” The climate here is more temperate and healthy (except in the lowlands near the sea-coast), which is a pleasant change from the tropical heat of Northern Brazil. Sao Paulo is very up-to-date, and more like a modern European city than any other in Brazil. Yet although many of the Portuguese-speaking people who live here are educated, they are very ignorant of the true religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their religion, like that of the people in every other city in South America, consists chiefly in the worship of a woman, the Virgin Mary, and there are very many Roman Catholic feasts given in her honour during the year. The mother of our Saviour is thus the object of worship of many thousands of women and children in South America to-day, and yet the exaltation of the Virgin Mary has not by any means uplifted these women and children; on the contrary, their social, moral, and spiritual state is worse than that of the women and children of any heathen country. It is only where the Lord Jesus Christ is worshipped and upheld that mothers, sisters, and little children are honoured, cared for, and put into their proper place. In South America the Lord Jesus is either represented as a little child in His mother’s arms, as on the cross, or as lying dead in a coffin. As the Saviour is thus misrepresented to them, it is perhaps not to be wondered at that these women and children, who do not know the truth about His love, turn away from the apparently dead Christ, to the warm, kindly-looking, gaudily-decked figure of Mary, about whom the Church of Rome says: “Come unto Mary, all ye who are burdened and weary with your sins, and she will give you rest.” It is to Mary and not to the Lord Jesus that the children of South America are bidden to turn.