On Saturday occurs the most grotesque and curious of all the festivals of the Church. It is the day on which final disposition is made of that arch-traitor Judas Iscariot, and the day is devoted to his humiliation and death. Effigies of the traitor are hung over the streets everywhere and all day long men parade the streets with figures of the betrayer of Christ upon poles. These effigies range in size from miniature figures to those of gigantic proportions. Each figure is made of _papier maché_, is filled with explosives and has a fuse which is generally the moustache. Hundreds of the images are sold to the children in each city who explode them with great glee. Judas is represented with folded hands, arms akimbo, with legs in running posture and in every conceivable attitude. Some of them bear suggestive mottoes such as “I am a scion of the Devil” and “Let me give up the Ghost.” Each person must destroy a Judas. At ten o’clock as the great bells of the cathedral in the City of Mexico sound and other bells follow, the fuses to these effigies are lighted. The great Judases strung across the streets or tied to balconies are exploded amid great rejoicing. Coins representing the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas are sometimes thrown to the crowd from the windows of wealthy residents or clubs. Every one grows wild and the little folks become almost beside themselves with excitement. The bells in the towers ring out their rejoicings and a peculiar apparatus gives out a sound which represents the breaking of the bones of the thieves on the cross. The crowds also have innumerable rattles which make a hideous, grating sound intended to represent the same incident. The noise of the bells, the explosion of the fire-crackers, and the shouts of the multitude form a strange, exciting, ludicrous scene never to be forgotten. When the last Judas has been demolished, the excitement subsides and a good-natured frolic follows. The national holidays, of which there are many, are greatly overshadowed by those pertaining to the Church, and none of them are so universally observed. Not all the feasts and festivals of Mexico are of Romish origin. Some of them are founded upon the remains of Aztec idolatry, for the priests of the early days with a wise foresight adopted the same day for feast-days in many instances. Though these Indians probably could not tell why, yet they have a great reverence for the saints whom they worship after their own fashion. They are delighted to have more occasions for decorating themselves and their churches with flowers, marching in processions, dancing and letting off rockets.