advises; Charles's Wain, of course, is already thus hitched. My fellow-traveler says you can go over all the world and never see a sight like that, a hole opened through a mountain cliff. It is a hundred feet below the summit; but it is easily attained, if one seeks adventures. The hills on that side, in their ravines, show how intense is the heat; for those hollows, even up to their summits, are filled with green shrubs, and grasses, and trees. Where snow would lie in Switzerland, flowers and grasses of tropical quality grow here.
Santa Caterina is the name of the village at the base of this true "hole in the wall." In a shop in this rancho I find on the counter a picture of the Virgin, framed in tin, for sale, tin and all, for two reals. The engraving puts a crown on her head, and in its corner drawings make her alike crowned, and men her worshipers. I tried my broken Spanish on the vender, saying, "Non Maria, pero Jesu Cristo solo" (Not Mary, but Jesus Christ only). This picture is one of many proofs of the reigning idolatry; for idolatry complete it is; none more so in India. The very term, which this picture recalls, "Queen of Heaven," was the exact ascription given to Astarte, the wickedest goddess of history, lustful as Venus, wrathful as Moloch—that bottom of hell, a fallen woman. Yet her boastful title is given to the sweet, humble, modest "Mother of our Lord." How the mountain views disappear before the condition of this people, revealed in that twenty-five-cent goddess. These also shall perish; they shall not endure; they shall be wrapped together as a scroll, and melt away as these hills have here once melted and stiffened. But of the poor souls that perish here for the lack of knowledge, it is said, they shall never be destroyed—dead, lost, perhaps, but never destroyed. We should forget all sight of earth in the passion for the souls of men.
Here is one at this rancho door, whom I met with at San Gregorio, that I have hopes may yet be brought to serve this people. He is quite black, was once a slave in Kentucky, who fought in our war as a soldier, was transferred to the border at its close, and de-
