Note 44 — Chapter III

This estimation of the number of the Roman Catholic Christians (48,000) is certainly too high, even if we should forget how the missionaries of the Romish church behave in regard to their so called converts. They insinuate themselves as physicians into the houses of the Indians; draw a wet cloth over the head and forehead of a sick person, even when at the point of death; mutter privately to themselves the baptism service; and think they have then made one Christian more, who is immediately added to their list.—The protestant missionaries have in the course of nineteen years baptised 19,340 persons. See Neuere Geschichte der evangelischen Missions-anstalten, 51st part, Halle 1797, 4to. p. 187. F.