Corumbá is a typical Brazilian town. Little carts, drawn by a string of goats or rams, thread their way through the streets. Any animal but the human must do the work. As the majority of the people go barefooted, the patriarchal custom prevails of having water offered on entering a house to wash the feet. At all hours of the day men, women and children seek to cool themselves in the river, which is here a mile wide, and with a depth of 20 feet in the channel. While on the subject of bathing, I might mention that a wooden image of the patron saint of the town is, with great pomp, brought down at the head of a long procession, once every year, to receive his annual "duck" in the water. This is supposed to benefit him much. After his immersion, all the inhabitants, men, women and children, make a rush to be the first to dip in the "blessed water," for, by doing this, all their sins are forgiven them for a year to come. The sick are careful to see that they are not left in the position of the unfortunate one mentioned in the Gospel by John, who "had no one to put him into the pool." I have also known the Virgin solemnly carried down to the water's edge, that she might command it to rise or fall, as suited the convenience of the people. While she exercised her power the natives knelt around her on the shingly beach in rapturous devotion. At such times the "Mother of Heaven" is clothed in her best, and the jewels in her costume sparkle in the tropical sun. What the Nile is to Egypt, the Paraguay River is to these interior lands, and what Isis was to the Egyptians, so is the Virgin to these people. Once, when the waters were low, it is related the Virgin came down from heaven and stood upon some rocks in the river bed. To this day the pilot tells you how her footprints are to be clearly seen, impressed in the stone, when the water is shallow. Strange that Mahomet does not rise from his tomb and protest, for that miracle we must concede to him, because his footprints have been on the sacred rocks at Mecca for a thousand years. Does he pass it over, believing, with many, that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Whatever Roman Catholicism is in other parts of the world, in South America it is pure Mariolatry. The creed, as we have seen, reads: "Mary must be our first object of worship, Saint Joseph the second." Along with these, saints, living and dead, are numberless.