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He visited every hut of the Omaguas tribe; knew every man, woman, and child of them by name; went to the outlying tribes, and did the same there; enlarged his work so that finally he had time to visit each settlement only once a year. His health failing, he went to Pará to recruit; was sent by the Paraenses against his will to Portugal; was received there with distinction, and returned with a "royal escort" of soldiers, which accompanied him all the way to Mainas. Arrived at Omaguas, his escort suddenly disclosed its true object by claiming the land in the name of the King of Portugal. Upon the unfurling of the Portuguese flag, Padre Fritz fled down the bank and pushed off in a canoe, taking refuge in the forests, until the usurpers, unable to obtain food from the Indians after such an episode, were forced to retreat. Fritz at once started to appeal for aid from the Viceroy of Peru, crossed the Andes by way of Moyobamba, Chachapoyas, and Cajamarca, and "surprised" the people of Lima with his account of the thriving missions. The Viceroy, Conde de la Monclova, entertained him with courtesy, but after some days announced, "as the Montaña prospers the King nothing, it is not meet to waste his resources in protecting it." Poor Fritz, disheartened, but devoted to his chosen work, determined to make this neglected region better known, to which end he crossed the Andes to Jaen, and made a map of the Amazon from that point, and of such other parts of South America as he knew from experience and from accounts which he deemed trustworthy, which map was published in Quito in 1707, and long remained the standard. Finally he returned to Mainas, where he lived and labored until 1730, when, at the good old age of eighty, he died at Jeberos, honored as the faithful apostle to the Omaguas. After his death the spirit of the old padres seems to have disappeared, and a new era began. The Franciscans had entered from the south in 1657, under Padre Manuel Biedma, but their missions were destroyed by an uprising of the Conibos in 1686.

In 1745 the King of Spain ordered an investigation of the condition of the missions of Mainas, and sent out a company of Jesuits to revive them. The new arrivals either returned disheartened by a condition of things which they considered hopeless, or, by reason of their ignorance of the ways of dealing with the Indians, got

speedily killed. Thus ended what is known as the third missionary epoch of the Montaña. The Portuguese invaded the country from time to time, when there was nothing more heroic to be thought of, and many sanguinary conflicts followed. Communication became less and less across the mountains, and more frequent with Pará. The priests lost enthusiasm for a work which the world cared nothing about. They went their rounds mechanically from village to village performing the sacramental offices, and receiving fees in salt fish, sarsaparilla, copal, and other products of the country. There was beginning to be a market for these things in Pará. When the canoe was full, they had only to float down the river to convert this raw material into cash. Priestcraft degenerated into a sordid business, bartering the administration of sacraments for salt fish. In earlier days Padre Acuña refused to give a crucifix to a chieftain, fearing lest supernatural powers should be attributed to it; the later priests used the superstition of the natives for their own worldly profit. The Indian always took a vigorous hold upon what was tangible in religion-the symbol stripped of its significance. When the Franciscan friars Salcedo and San José tried in 1760 to re-establish the missions founded by Biedma, which had been destroyed in 1686, they found the savages still imitating baptism by sprinkling the heads of new-born babes with lime juice!

Peruvian law and the influence of steamboats have co-operated to abolish the merchant priests of former years, and a reaction is taking place. The young Peruvian, learning somewhat of philosophy and moral systems, laughs at a religion of the heart. An Omar's song to

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wine, wine, wine," with a golden thread of wisdom, a coruscation of a gay conceit, and a lurking shadow of the occult, too nearly fills the sum of his soul's needs. After a deeper experience of life he becomes conscious of the spirituality which lies at the centre of being, but feels that it has lost vitality through the kind of formal interpretation which he habitually sees.

He has not, however, arrived at that plane where he has courage to cast off allegiance to the Church. Accordingly he supplements the old creed with a new mystery of spiritualism. This strange belief is gaining ground each

day, and its advocates point with pride to the United States as the source whence proceeded this new light for needy souls -alas! point to Boston as one of its glorious centres of propagation!

The Indian remains stationary, ignorant of the spirituality of religion, failing to appreciate the principle of sacrifice of self-will which it involves. Material sacrifice can scarcely enter into his experience, for he possesses practically nothing, and continual fasting is one of the conditions of his existence; consequently it is the feast which appeals most to him, and this he converts into an orgy. The merchant priests were too engrossed in making a fair profit out of baptisms to attend to spiritual culture, and the dream of the Cuxias, Figueroas, Fritzes-to work reformation through the children-was never realized. The people, Indians and cholos, reasoned in some measure also, and began to take their chances of death and hell, postponing baptisms and marriages as long as they chose. If it was all right to take a wife and wait a year until a padre should happen to come along to marry them, why not wait two years, ten years? The opportunity for separations

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by delaying the irrevocable seal of the Church is thus left open, and family relations, as a natural outgrowth of this license, are often very unstable in the Montaña.

Efforts at reform are now making among certain Peruvian and English Catholics resident there, and the old ascetic spirit has been reinstated among the fathers of the Ucayali. It remains to be seen what good they may accomplish. These Indians with whom they must deal are a peculiar people. In the most degraded there is still a gleam of some intelligence, of a power which is to him a beacon light. The eye has depth; the mouth seems set to preserve an inner secret of the Indian life, and of the way the universe reveals itself to his consciousness. The Inca conquering him could make an Inca of him; the Spaniard has never turned him into a Spaniard. Although he has abandoned the more atrocious practices of his former barbarism, in all else he continues to follow the prehistoric groove. He bears a Christian name, he bows before the cross, but nature is God to him, as to the pre-Columbian savage, and he remains an Indian still.

FR

FROM THE BLACK FOREST TO THE BLACK SEA.

BY F. D. MILLET.

ROM the heights of Belgrade we had seen the blue summits of mountains far away to the south, the outlying spurs of the great Carpathian range, and having threaded a tortuous way through the great Hungarian plain, we now looked forward with exhilaration to the rugged scenery we were soon to enjoy, and were eager to welcome a change in the horizon. We saw on the map no town of importance between the Servian frontier and Orsova, at the Iron Gates, and since we were not unwilling to have a little quiet after so many days of excitement among novelties of type and costume, we noticed with satisfaction as we went along that the flat shore on the Hungarian side and the low hills opposite offered us no temptation to land. To be sure, we were still in some doubt as to our probable reception in a Servian village, for Belgrade was the only Servian place we had visit

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ed, and we could not judge from our experience at the capital what might happen if we went ashore in a remote town. We had heard many tales of the difficulties of travelling in the remote districts of Servia, and had provided ourselves with passports properly viséed in many languages. As we had no occasion to show them in Belgrade, we now began to have some curiosity about their usefulness, and we contemplated going ashore at a Servian village for no better reason than to test this question. But before we found an attractive landingplace, we saw, far below us in the distance, about noon on the day after leaving the frontier, what appeared to be a curious row of buildings on the low Servian shore, stretching out into the river like piers of a great railway bridge, or a line of grain-elevators. At first we thought it was mirage, which so frequent

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ly deceived us by its distortion of forms and exaggeration of heights, but as we paddled on against the wind we soon saw it was a collection of solid architectural forms. It was, however, only when we were within a mile or so of the town that we recognized in what we had taken to be a modern landmark the huge towers and walls of the great mediæval citadel of Semendria, rising in all their ancient dignity from the very waters of the Danube, and overtopping with their masses of solid masonry the little town modestly nestling in the shadow of the great fortress. recent years Semendria has become of commercial importance as a shipping-port for grain, and when we entered the town its narrow streets were blocked by hundreds of laden ox-carts, all patiently waiting their turn at the public scales, where the weight of the grain is guaranteed by the town officers before it is delivered to the lighters. Through a motley crowd of Servians in barbaric fur caps, red sashes, rawhide sandals, and the coarsest of homespun garments, we made our way to the fortress. The great walls enclose a triangular space of ten or twelve acres, occupying the whole of a low point between the river Jessava and the Danube. The apex of the triangle at the junction of the rivers is a citadel of great strength, and still in wonderful preservation. Indeed, the walls of the whole enclosure

and the twenty-three great square towers show remarkably few signs of decay, and, with the exception of the destruction of the wooden platforms, are almost as sound as the day they were built. Here and there an inscription, or a fragment of a statue built into the walls, proves that the importance of the town dates as far back as the Roman occupation, when this was undoubtedly one of a series of strongholds along the river. The barracks of the Servian garrison which stand in the great enclosure appear like huts in comOf parison with the immense towers and high walls of the medieval structure, and a regiment of infantry may be quite lost sight of among the tangled bushes and the thick foliage of the trees which cover a large part of the ground. From the top of one of the great towers we saw below and before us a panorama of varied beauty, extending from the heights of Belgrade to the Carpathian range, faintly shadowed in the distance beyond the glittering expanse of the Danube, which spreads out into great broad reaches, with numerous islands, and, like its smaller self among the mountains of Baden, pauses and gathers volume and strength for the dash into the great gorge that cleaves the jagged mass of mountains for fifty miles or more before again resuming its quiet flow. As we went away from Semendria the chief of police was among

the party assembled to see us off, and here, we thought, was the opportunity to see whether our passports would be honored. We offered them to the official, modestly at first, but he would not even look at the envelopes.

"But they are our passports," we urged. "They cost us a lot of money and trouble, and if no official looks at them they will be wasted, for they are only good for one year!"

But he resolutely declined to have anything to do with them, although we increased the urgency of our request almost to the strength of a demand, and we left quite ready to believe the statement of a scoffing friend in Buda-Pesth, who declared that any one could travel the whole length of the Danube with no more of a passport than a restaurant bill of fare, which would satisfy the officials as well as the best parchment with signatures and seals.

At Bazias, on the Hungarian side of the river, the terminus of the railway from Temesvár, and the point where the tourist usually takes a steamer for the trip through the Kasan Defile and the Iron Gates, there is nothing on shore more interesting than a railway restaurant, but the landscape is very grand and beautiful. The hills completely mask the course of the river as the traveller approaches them from up stream, and the fine ruin of the castle Rama, on the Servian side, seems to stand on the shore of a large lake with a southern boundary of great mountains. From Rama the river sweeps majestically around to the south past Bazias, and narrows somewhat as it winds among the first great foot-hills of the mountain range, spreading out after a few miles into another lakelike reach, which in turn has on its southern horizon

RAMA.

an apparently impassable chain of mountains--this time the real Carpathians.

As we crossed the river from Rama toward the cluster of houses on the water's edge at Bazias, we observed that the little village, dwarfed to insignificance by the towering hills above it. was all gay with flags. On closer approach we distinguished near the landing the form of a low gray vessel quite unlike any craft we had hitherto seen. This proved to be an Austrian gunboat, and the occasion of the display of bunting was the birthday of the Emperor Francis Joseph. As we drifted down toward the man-of-war we hoisted all the flags we had, and as we were passing in review with all the dignity we could command, we were startled by the loud report of a champagne cork pointed in our direction, and fired, as it were, across our bows. We surrendered at once and unconditionally, and exchanged cards with a group of officers celebrating the Emperor's birthday on the quarter-deck. We found our captivity so little irksome that we willingly prolonged it until we were admonished by the position of the sun in the heavens that we must be off if we would reach the entrance to the Carpathian gorge before dark. Our haste was due to no more cogent reason than ambition to begin the fight with the river at the so-called cataracts. These obstructions had been described to us by friends who had made the journey in a steamer as extremely dangerous, and, as we neared the mountains, all the rivermen we talked with warned us of the perils of the stream below, and advised us on no account to attempt the passage of the cataracts without a pilot. But we could not forget the collapse of the Strudel and Wirbel bugbear in the upper

river, and could not bring ourselves to apprehend any great danger in rapids where steamers are constantly passing up and down with loaded lighters in tow. Even our newfound friends on the gun-boat, who had just made the trip, caution

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ed us not to attempt the passage in our frail canoes, and took great pains to show us the dangerous points on their charts. Of course the more we heard of these terrors to navigation the more eager we became to look upon them ourselves, The last words our naval advisers said to us, as we regretfully left them, was to be sure to take a pilot at Drenkova, the last steamboat landing above the rapids.

From the broad reach just below Bazias the whole horizon to the south and east appears to be a solid wall of rocky heights, and is without a break visible to the eye. For about twenty miles the river winds gently across a pleasant valley, divides around a large island, and then sweeps straight down toward the huge barrier, which extends to the right and left as far as the eye can see. As we paddled along in the quiet current past the Servian town of Gradiste, and came nearer and nearer to the mass of rugged peaks which cut sharply against the sky, we grew more and more impatient to discover the course of the river through the chain, and unconsciously increased the rapidity and the force of our stroke until we sped along as if paddling a race. Suddenly, as we were passing the end of the large island, the landscape opened to the eastward like the shifting scenes on a stage, and the river, sweeping past a high isolated rock in mid-stream, was seen to plunge with accelerated speed directly into a narrow cleft between immense limestone cliffs, and to disappear in the depths of the gorge. Guarding the entrance to this defile, the ruin of the castle of Golubáç, ou the Servian shore, piles its towers high on a spur which juts out boldly over the river, and shades a pleasant little green meadow by the water-side. Along the Hungarian bank the famous highway of Count Széchenyi, leading from the town of Moldova just above to Orsova, at the Roumanian frontier, shows the straight line of its cuttings and embankments but a few feet above the water. The smooth perpendicular cliffs are perforated by numerous caverns, one of which tradition has marked as the place whence

issue the swarms of vicious flies which persecute the cattle in the summertime.

The green meadow under Golubáç invited us to a pleasant camp, for night was fast coming on as we finished our sketching, and we were loath to leave

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GOLUBÁÇ.

But one

the charming, romantic spot. of our party, unable to resist the impulse to penetrate the gathering gloom of the defile, had drifted on and was lost to sight. The whole sky was tinged with the coppery red of sunset when we set out to overtake him. The river whirled and rushed and wrestled with our paddles as we floated on into the deepening twilight. Now and then a great boiling under our very keels would throw us out of our course, and make the light canoes bound along with an unfamiliar and disturbing motion. On and on we went, unable longer to see a map, and with no means of determining where and when we should come upon the dangerous rapids and whirlpools that lay somewhere in our path. Frequent camp fires sparkled at the water's edge, and from one to another we paddled, waking the echoes with the shrill notes of our whistles, until at last, just as we had concluded to give up the search, certain that we had passed our companion in the darkness, we heard his welcome hail, and were soon in camp.

The plaintive song of a peasant girl, spinning from a distaff as she walked through the rustling maize-field behind our camp, brought us to our feet long before we had slept off the effects of our sixty miles' paddle of the day before; and, eager to be at the rapids, we ate a hasty breakfast and were off down the

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