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ABOUT MEXICO.

in second stories and on roofs and going about in boats. The poor natives gave all the credit of this providential interference to their patron Our Lady of Guadaloupe.

As in other things, so also in the matter of education, did the Church befriend the Indians. In the latter part of the sixteenth century the Jesuits founded a seminary where the natives were taught to read, write and recite prayers to the Virgin and the saints. The University of Mexico, for the education of Creole youth, had been established more than thirty years when this school was begun. About the same time an attempt was made to gather the wandering savage tribes at the North into settled habitations, and to teach them to work as a source of revenue to the colony, and also to quell their constant tendency to rebellion. This proved to be a very difficult task, and more than one mission established for this purpose was destroyed and had its leaders murdered by those whom they came to help.