What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

CITY OF LIIA.
would exercise in reforming actual immorality cannot be
doubted.
A description of the seventy churches, parish and conventual, of Lima, would be tedious and uninteresting. They
resemble each other in general appearance and structure externally and internally, varying in size, some of them being
insignificantly small, while others although large are without
grandeur, and arrest the attention merely by being overloaded
with tasteless and unharmonious decorations. The mention of
a few may be excused. The church of San Pedro, more than
two hundred years old, is next in size and nearly as large as the
cathedral; but time and frequent earthquakes have so damaged
and disfigured it, as to render an outlay sufficient to restore
its original strength and style beyond the straitened meansof
those who administer its trusts. And indeed the appropriation
of so large a sum for purposes of pomp and vanity, would be of
doubtful propriety even if possessed, when the wants of the
crowd of beggars surrounding its portal, and petitioning the
nearly as impoverished looking devotees passing in and out, is
considered. The halt, the blind, the poor, mighlt well invoke
curses rather than blessings upon those who, indifferent to their
suffering and destitution, should divert the gifts of divine beneficence and the means of charity to purposes of empty show,
and a splendor that would shame the piretences of those who
profess to obey and teach the precepts of Christ, and yet would
witness the afflicted pauper kneel day by day unrelieved at the
door of hlis sanctuary.
The church of Nuestra Senora de la A[ered, also large and
elaborately ornamented, is in a better state of preservation than
San Pedro. It belongs to an order of priesthood considered one
of the richest in South America at this time. Our Lady of Mercy
is thie patroness of the army of Peru, by whom her bedizened
effigy is escorted with great military parade on all occasions
observed in her honor.
The church, monastery, and college of San Francisco, with
their gardens, cover a space of from twenty to twenty-five acres.
The church still retains much of thie splendor for which it was
formerly distinguished; but this order of priesthood has lost its
114
I