a sufficient sum to induce any poor Indian, with a family, to add one to her stock. Each lady of the society has a certain number under her peculiar care, and gives their clothes, which are poor enough, but according to the village fashion. The child thus put out to nurse, is brought back to the Cuna when weaned, and remains under the charge of the society for life; but of the hundreds and tens of hundreds that have passed through their hands, scarcely one has been left to grow up in the Cuna. They are constantly adopted by respectable persons, who, according to their inclination or abilities, bring them up either as favored servants, or as their own children; and the condition of a "huerfano," an orphan, as a child from the hospital is always called, is perfectly upon a level with that of the most petted child of the house. The nurses in the Cuna are paid eight dollars per month.
Upwards of a hundred nurses and babies arrived on Sunday, taking up their station on the grass, under the shade of a large ash tree in the court-yard. The nurses are invariable bronze; the babies generally dark, though there was a sprinkling of fair English or German faces amongst them, with blue eyes and blonde hair, apparently not the growth of Mexican land. Great attention to cleanliness cannot be hoped for from this class; but the babies looked healthy and contented. Each nurse had to present a paper which had been given her for that purpose, containing her own name, the name of the child, and that of the lady under whose particular charge she was. Such as—"Maria Josefa—baby Juanita de los Santos—
