municipal magistracy, behave in the most merciless manner to all the Mexicans who may have committed any crimes in the district intrusted to their care. The worst of all cruelties, the cruelty of weakness, is resorted to on such occasions. It was quite useless to struggle against those sturdy rough alguazils with the bare legs and long hair. We went quietly enough to the house of the alcalde.
"Have patience," said Fray Serapio to me, in a low voice, while going along: "instead of the history of Fray Epigmenio, which I will tell you at some other time, you will behold a sight which few foreigners have an opportunity of seeing in Mexico. If I am not mistaken, we have fallen upon this cursed village at the very time when the Indians celebrate, in their way, the fêtes of the Holy Week. The house of the alcalde is one of the ordinary resting-places of their nocturnal processions."
I had often heard of these singular ceremonies, in which the remains of Indian idolatry are mixed up with the rites of Catholicism. Just when I was going to reply to Fray Serapio, some melancholy monotonous sounds met our ears. The plaintive wail of the reed flute, called by the Indians chirimia, was sadly intermingled with the tapping of several drums struck at regular intervals.
"Three hundred years ago," said Don Diego Mercado to me in a whisper, "it was to the sound of these chirimias that the ancestors of these Indians butchered their human victims at the feet of their idols."
Round a lane, which ran at right angles to the road, came the procession whose approach was announced by this funereal music. Engaged during the day in cultivating their grounds, the Indians devote the night
