On great religious days pavilions are not unfrequently erected in convenient situations for the reception of the effigies of the Virgin, our Saviour, and Cross, around which all sorts of silver and other ornaments are placed in fanciful confusion. The entrances into the churches and chapels, even in the rigid climate of Cerro and the adjacent _haciendas_, are lavishly adorned with beautiful lilies conveyed from the valleys; and wreaths and festoons of flowers hang over and around the doors of the pavilions and churches, which, when good metals are abundant, display a richness which only a mining country can be supposed to put within reach of the very humblest of the people. On such occasions the labouring miner often exhibits his person bedecked in the most gorgeous and expensive fashion; while he farcically dances, ankle-deep (if it happen to be the wet season) in mud, as gay and as merry as a London chimney-sweep on a May morning. So marked is the taste for flowers among the poorest tenants of a mud-and-cane booth in the Vale of Huanuco, that on the festival of Corpus Christi,—a day of joy to the agricultural Indian, who always eats meat on this day, even should he have passed the rest of the year, like an anchorite, on vegetable diet,—the poor women and children on the sugar estates approach the house of their _patron_ with hats, hands, and mantles full of the sweetest blossoms, which they strew before his door, and along his hall and corridor, as a sign of respect and rejoicing. To such expressions of good feeling he courteously responds by ordering the _tinaja_, or large jar of guarapo, to be placed at their disposal, under the direction of a major-domo or corporal of the field; and then with guitar and harp they engage in festive frolics. But however desirous of enforcing a stricter observance of the days devoted to the service of the church, it has not been the aim of the prefect to check or discontinue the more innocent amusements of music and dance, or those of bull-fights and fire-works, in which the Indian also delights. He has struck at the principal cause of alienation from the house of God, namely, drunkenness, by condemning all those who are convicted of rioting or breaking the peace to sweep the streets for three successive days; or, should this be considered too light a correction, to labour for the same number of days in some other work of public utility.[14] Idle vagabonds, without useful occupation or property, and even without country, are pronounced by the civil authorities to be found in all parts disseminating immorality and disorder; and seeing that to temporise with obnoxious characters of this sort is, in effect, to promote the cause of libertinism and idleness, it has been resolved at the prefectorate of Junin to persecute and exterminate, if they cannot amend, all such vicious intruders on society. PANTHEONS OR CEMETERIES.