Late one evening, after Missionary Ginsburg and I had returned from a trip into the interior of the State of Bahia, we arrived in the city of Nazareth.  It is a town of about 10,000 inhabitants.  We were to wait here until the following morning for the boat which was to take us to Bahia.

As we went down the street we saw a great throng of people surging about an image which was being carried upon the shoulders of some men.  Two priests walked in front to direct the movements of the procession.  More than half of the people in the city must have been in the procession.  They paraded far out into the country, crossed to the opposite side of the river, wound themselves back and forth through the narrow streets until a late hour at night.  At eleven o’clock just before we retired, we stood for some time watching the procession pass the hotel where we were stopping.  It was a miserably ugly little image, gaudily decorated.  It was being paraded through the streets for the purpose of staying the plague of smallpox, which at that time was scourging the town.  When we saw the procession last it had been augmented by such numbers that it appeared as if the entire city was following this image.  They seemed to believe that it could really charm away the smallpox.

This is not an isolated case.  It is typical.  Every patron saint has laid upon him at times the responsibility of breaking a drouth or the effects of a dreadful scourge which may be afflicting the people.  It is the veriest sort of idolatry.

One of the most pitiful exhibitions of superstition to be found in Brazil is that in connection with the many shrines to which pilgrimages are made by thousands of people and at which places great miracles are supposed to be performed.  In Bahia there is a famous shrine called Bom Fim (Good End).  It is located on a hill in the suburbs of the city.  Years ago tradition has it, the image of San Salvador was found on the summit of this hill.  A priest took charge of the image and removed it to a church.  On the following morning the image was missing, and upon going to the spot where he first found it, he discovered the image.  Again he took it to the church, and again on the following day, he found the image at the original place.  The tradition was, therefore, started that the image had fallen from Heaven to the top of the hill, and every time it was removed from this spot it, of itself, returned.  So it was taken for granted that the image desired its shrine built on this spot.  At first there was a little shrine constructed, and afterward was built the magnificent edifice which now shelters the image.