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their syndic, who resides at Cumana. This recommendation was so much the more useful to us, as the
missionaries, either from zeal for the purity of the morals of their parishioners, or to conceal the monastic
system from the indiscreet curiosity of strangers, often adhere with rigor to an old regulation, by which a
white man of the secular state is not permitted to sojourn more than one night in an Indian village. In
order to travel agreeably in the Spanish Missions, it would be in general imprudent, to trust solely to a
passport issued by the Secretary of State's office at Madrid, or that of the civil governors. A traveller
must provide himself with recommendations from the ecclesiastical authorities, particularly from the
guardians of the convents, or the generals of the orders, residing at Rome; who are infinitely more
respected by the missionaries, than are the bishops. The Missions form, I will not say according to their
primitive and canonical institutions, but in fact, a distinct and nearly independent hierarchy, the views of
which seldom accord with those of the secular clergy.
The missionary of San Fernando was a capuchin, a native of Arragon, far advanced in years, but
strong and healthy. His extreme corpulency, his hilarity, the interest he took in battles and sieges, ill
accorded with the ideas we form in our northern countries of the melancholy