to the vomit of the idolatrous devices which they had laid aside for their baptism--if indeed they had laid these aside. For in the case of one baptized so casually, the idolatries and superstitions in which one has been educated all his life, are not laid aside but are only concealed, unless he have help from without. This is still more the case among those who live all their lives in the midst of heathen and who know that the priest who baptizes them today will have to go away tomorrow, as has happened to these poor Indians. There was even one priest who was so slothful in this duty that without teaching them what they were to believe, he baptized them by force, making them bring all the boys and girls together, though they had already reached adolescence, and gave them in writing the Christian names which they were to have. With no further preparation than this, he baptized on the second day those whom he had not scared away. These were not a few; for since the baptism was not voluntary, but by force, they ran away, because no great care was taken to keep them. To keep themselves from being annoyed in this way again, they kept their names and said they were Christians, so that in this way they might avoid baptism and those who baptized them. They had the idea that baptism was a curse poured out upon them; and they scarcely got out of the hands of the baptizer before they bathed, and carefully washed off the chrism and the holy oils, in which they believed the curses of baptism consisted. Both classes returned to their idolatries, their superstitions, and their sins, as if they had never been baptized; and the priest went away well satisfied, leaving written on a piece of wood the names of those whom he had baptized, and supposing that he had done a great service to the Lord. Then he went on to perform as many other baptisms, or sacrileges, in another village. In a district so remote and so new, all this could easily and did happen. It was this that afterward gave the religious the greatest trouble and the most anxiety. On the one hand, in the first years there were many who, without being baptized, acted as if they were Christians, confessing, communicating, and receiving the other sacraments as if they were so indeed; on the other hand, many of those who were baptized concealed their baptisms, and acted in all things like heathens; and, since the religious did not understand the language, it was very easy to deceive them until in time they had learned it. Then by preaching and talking with the Indians, they came little by little to learn of these things; and though it took a great deal of effort, with the aid of the Lord, they finally brought everything to the right order. When they discovered the root of these maladies, they immediately applied to them the proper remedy--declaring in their frequent sermons and their private conversations the evil condition in which those were who, without being Christians, acted as such; and likewise those,