or a cat it is painful to consider. While the keeper is enjoying his final sleep in the winter morning, the cat or the rabbit is quivering and crying with agony, from its limb being utterly crushed in the trap; and we are assured that the victims are left there sometimes for a day or two, when the keeper happens to be inconsiderate. “J.B.” confirms, in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, the statements of “C.D.,” and adds that in the Southern counties, where rabbits superabound, trappers are busy from November to February, each man being reckoned to have work enough in the charge of three dozen traps. Thus there are every morning, during those months, thousands of tortured animals writhing in traps, which seem to be made for the infliction of the greatest amount of pain. Whatever the gamekeepers may say, it is not conceivable that country gentlemen and farmers should suppose that such agony is a necessary condition of the preservation of either game or field crops. It must lie far within the mechanical ability of the day to devise a snare which shall detain animals, of one size and kind or of several, without crushing limbs. To encage on the one hand, or kill on the other, must be practicable; and we must beg and pray of both the patrons and the enemies of vermin that the means may be devised at once.
CHIAPA CHOCOLATE.
Gage, the Dominican, a great admirer of Chocolate, a man who combated with all his energy the objections which medical men of the seventeenth century made to its use, derived its name from atte, the Mexican word for water, and the sound it makes when poured out,—choco, choco, choco, choco!
Oh, Professor Max Müller! what do you say to this? Whatever the derivation of the name may be, the composition of the beverage is well known. Cacao, sugar, long-pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, almonds, mace, anise-seed, are the main constituents, and the cake-chocolate used in Britain is believed to be made of about one-half genuine cacao, the remainder of flour or Castile soap.
We are not going any further into the mysteries of its composition, which may be ascertained from any encyclopædia, for our business is with a circumstance in connection with its history, probably known to few.
And first for our authority—the afore-mentioned Dominican. Thomas Gage was born of a good family in England; his elder brother was Governor of Oxford in 1645, when King Charles retreated thither during the Great Rebellion. Whilst still young, Thomas had been sent to Spain for education, and had entered the Dominican order, and having been, like so many Spanish ecclesiastics, fired with missionary zeal, he embarked at Cadiz for Vera Cruz, whence he betook himself to Mexico, near which town he made a retreat, previous to devoting himself to a life of toil in the Philippines.
However, the accounts he received of these islands were so discouraging, and the monastic life in Mexico was so inviting, that he postponed his expedition indefinitely. But Gage had no intention of spending his life in ease: he hurried over the different districts of Mexico and Guatemala, making hmself acquainted with the languages spoken whereever he went, and he laboured indefatigably as priest to several parishes of great extent.
Gage’s account of the cultivation of the cacao and the manufacture of chocolate is interesting, his treatise on its medical properties—conceived in the taste and spirit of his day—curious, and his personal narrative, lively and amusing.
One little statement must not be passed over. Chocolate, it seems, is useful as a cosmetic; Creole ladies eat it to deepen their skin tint, just on the same principle, observes Gage, as English ladies devour whitewash from the walls, to clarify their complexion.
Chiapa was a central point for Gage’s labours during a considerable period. At that time it was a small cathedral town, containing 400 Spanish families, and 100 Mexican houses in a fauxbourg by itself.
The cathedral served as parish church to the inhabitants: one Dominican and one Franciscan monastery, besides a poverty-stricken nunnery, supplied the religious requirements of the diocesan city. No Jesuits there! quoth Gage, with a little rancour. Those good men seldom leave rich and opulent towns; and when you learn the fact that there are no Jesuits at Chiapa, you may draw the immediate inference that the town is poor, and the inhabitants not liberally disposed.
Liberally disposed! The high and stately creole Doms, who claimed descent from half the noble families of Spain; the grand representatives of the De Solis, Cortez, De Velasco, De Toledo, De Zerna, De Mendoza, who lived by cattle-jobbing and by pasturing droves of mules on their farms, and who gave themselves the airs of dukes, and were as ignorant and not so well-behaved as the donkeys they reared; who ate a dinner of salt and kidney-beans in five minutes, and spent an hour at their doors picking their teeth, wiping their moustaches, and boasting of the fricasees and fricandoes they had been tasting—these men liberally disposed!
They contributed nothing to the treasury of the Church, but gave the clergy considerable trouble. These Creoles particularly disliked and resented any allusion to their duty of almsgiving, and a request for charity was by them regarded as a personal affront.
Gage was soon intimate with the Bishop, Dom Bernard de Salazar, a very worthy prelate, perhaps a little wee bit too fond of the good things of this present life, but otherwise most exemplary, very energetic, and as bold as a saint in reforming abuses which had crept into the Church.
Talk of abuses, and you may be sure that woman is at the bottom of them! A certain Czar, whenever he heard of a misfortune, at once asked, “Who was she?” knowing that some woman had originated it. The same view may perhaps be taken of abuses and corruptions in the Church.
Dom Bernard de Salazar had the misfortune to live in a perpetual state of contest with the ladies of his flock, and the subject of dispute was cho-