Military Hierarchy of Mexico -- Religious Superstitions -- Legend of _Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe_ -- A profane version of the Story -- A curious Plan for manufacturing Water -- Saints and Images -- Processions -- How to make it Rain -- The Sacred Host -- Fanaticism and Murder -- Honors paid to a Bishop -- Servility to Priests -- Attendance at Public Worship -- New Mexicans in Church -- The Vesper Bells -- Passion Week and the Ceremonies pertaining thereto -- Ridiculous _Penitencia_ -- Whitewashing of Criminals -- Matrimonial Connexions and Mode of Contracting them -- Restrictions upon Lovers -- Onerous Fees paid for Marriages and Burials -- Anecdote of a _Ranchero_ -- Ditto of a Servant and a Widow, illustrative of Priestly Extortion -- Modes of Burial, and Burial Ground of the Heretics. The Mexicans seem the legitimate descendants of the subjects of 'His Most Catholic Majesty;' for the Romish faith is not only the religion established by law, but the only one tolerated by the constitution: a system of republican liberty wholly incomprehensible to the independent and tolerant spirits of the United States. Foreigners only of other creeds, in accordance with treaty stipulations, can worship privately within their own houses.[11] The Mexicans, indeed, talk of a 'union of Church and State:' they should rather say a 'union of Church and Army;' for, as has {246} [Pg038] already been shown, the civil authority is so nearly merged in the military and the ecclesiastical, that the government, if not a military hierarchy, is something so near akin that it is difficult to draw the distinction. As Mr. Mayer[12] very appropriately remarks, you are warned of the double dominion of the army and the church "by the constant sound of the drum and the bell, which ring in your ears from morn to midnight, and drown the sounds of industry and labor."