There is no church or priest in the village of Piedra Blanca. Down on the beach there is a church bell, which the visitor concludes is a start in that direction, but he is told that it is destined for the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, three hundred miles inland. The bell was a present to the church by some pious devotee, but the money donated did not provide for its removal inland. This cost the priests refuse to pay, and the Chiquitanos equally refuse to transport it free. There is no resident priest to make them, so there it stays. In the meantime the bell is slung up on three poles. It was solemnly beaten with a stick on Christmas Eve to commemorate the time when the "Mother of Heaven" gave birth to her child Jesus. In one of the principal houses of the village the scene was most vividly reproduced. A small arbor was screened off by palm leaves, in which were hung little colored candles. Angels of paper were suspended from the roof, that they might appear to be bending over the Virgin, which was a highly-colored fashion-plate cut from a Parisian journal that somehow had found its way there. The child Jesus appeared to be a Mellin's Food-fed infant. Round this fairy scene the youth and beauty of the place danced and drank liberal potations of chicha, the Bolivian spirits, until far on into morning, when all retired to their hammocks to dream of their goddess and her lovely babe. After this paper Virgin the next most prominent object of worship I saw in Piedra Blanca was a saint with a dress of vegetable fibre, long hair that had once adorned a horse's tail, and eyes of pieces of clamshell. Poor, dark Bolivia! It would be almost an impossible thing to exaggerate the low state of religion there. A communication from Sucre reads: "The owners of images of Jesus as a child have been getting masses said for their figures. A band of music is employed, and from the church to the house a procession is formed. A scene of intoxication follows, which only ends when a good number lie drunk before the image--the greater the number the greater the honor to the image?" The peddler of chicha carries around a large stone jar, about a yard in depth. The payment for every drink sold is dropped into the jar of liquor, so the last customers get the most "tasty" decoction. Naturally the masses like a religion of license, and are as eager as the priests to uphold it. Read a tale of the persecution of a nineteenth century missionary there. Mr. Payne in graphic language tells the story: