a fair specimen of the supplications of the lowest religion.
Another equally authentic is given by Father Allouez.[297-3] In 1670 he
penetrated to an outlying Algonkin village, never before visited by a
white man. The inhabitants, startled by his pale face and long black
gown, took him for a divinity. They invited him to the council lodge, a
circle of old men gathered around him, and one of them, approaching him
with a double handful of tobacco, thus addressed him, the others
grunting approval:--

"This, indeed, is well, Blackrobe, that thou dost visit us. Have mercy
upon us. Thou art a Manito. We give thee to smoke.

"The Naudowessies and Iroquois are devouring us. Have mercy upon us.

"We are often sick; our children die; we are hungry. Have mercy upon us.
Hear me, O Manito, I give thee to smoke.

"Let the earth yield us corn; the rivers give us fish; sickness not slay
us; nor hunger so torment us. Hear us, O Manito, we give thee to smoke."

In this rude but touching petition, wrung from the heart of a miserable
people, nothing but their wretchedness is visible. Not the faintest
trace of an aspiration for spiritual enlightenment cheers the eye of the
philanthropist, not the remotest conception that through suffering we
are purified can be detected.

By the side of these examples we may place the prayers of Peru and
Mexico, forms composed by the priests, written out, committed to memory,
and repeated at certain seasons. They are not less authentic, having
been collected and translated in the first generation after the
conquest. One to Viracocha Pachacamac, was as follows:--

"O Pachacamac, thou who hast existed from the beginning and shalt exist
unto the end, powerful and pitiful; who createdst man by saying, let man
be; who defendest us from evil and preservest our life and health; art
thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or in the depths? Hear
the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him his petitions. Give
us life everlasting, preserve us, and accept this our sacrifice."[299-1]

In the voluminous specimens of Aztec prayers preserved by Sahagun, moral
improvement, the "spiritual gift," is very rarely if at all the object
desired. Health, harvests, propitious rains, release from pain,
preservation from dangers, illness, and defeat, these are the almost
unvarying themes. But here and there we catch a glimpse of something
better, some dim sense of the divine beauty of suffering, some feeble
glimme