the people of the village and the singers, in very charitable and edifying fashion. Those who are most eminent in all this are the members of the congregation, by whose zeal and pious customs the Christian religion is preserved and promoted in these islands. They are the select of the select, like the soldiers of Gideon; and may be called the religious among the Indians. The functions of Holy Week, the principal feast-days, and the processions are carried out with great solemnity and pomp. In their houses the people erect little altars, which they adorn with various prints and images; on their arms they depict crosses, and almost all wear rosaries about their necks; when the blessed sacrament is exposed, they escort it, and take their turn in assisting in the church with many lights. In the processions of Holy Week there are many bloody flagellations [disciplinas de sangre], and other most severe penances. In Lent there are, on three days, the Miserere and scourging; but this has fallen into disuse, and in various places is little more than a ceremony. In every village there is a musical choir, of both instruments and voices, by means of which the festival and solemn days, and divine worship, are at least decently celebrated; and in some places there are excellent instruments and voices. Moreover, all these singers understand harmony [solfa], a thing which has not its like in all Christendom. Every Saturday and Sunday, prime is sung in the choir. The Lenten stations and services, those for the dead, and others during the year, cause devotion and tender feelings through the skill and good order with which they are conducted. The Indians use holy water in their houses, and show great devotion to the holy cross, which they set up in their houses, on the roads, and in their grain-fields. The adornment of the churches--reredos, images, furnishings of silver, lamps, ornaments--the multitude of lights, and the magnificence of the edifices, are so extraordinary that no one would believe that in this remote corner of the world religion could exist with such splendor, or Christianity be so well established, [29] or divine worship conducted with such magnificence. The zeal of the ministers has secured these results, by their activity, piety, and kind treatment of the natives; but no little is accomplished by the sharp spur, [30] managed with discretion, qui parcit virgæ, odit filium. The harvest in this field is like that which the parable represents; there is the greatest and the least, just as it is throughout the universe. There is fertile ground and sterile; there are untilled and stony tracts; some land is productive, and some is full of bramble-patches. But what soil is free from darnel and tares? [31] Where are lilies found without having nettles near them? In what garden do the roses, magnificent and fragrant, surpass [the other flowers], without the thorns that surround them? He who is