SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION, TUCSON, ARIZONA
It is the Desert. Incense and frankincense, fragrance of roses and resin
of pines, cedar smells smoking in the sunlight, scent the air. Sunrise
comes over the mountain rim in shafts of a chariot wheel; and the
mountains, engirting the Desert round and round, are themselves veiled
in a mist, intangible and shimmering as dreams--a mist shot with the
gold of sunlight; and the air is champagne, ozone, nectar. Except in the
dead heat of midsummer, snow shines opal from the mountain peaks; and in
the outline of yon Tucson Range, the figure of a giant can be seen lying
prone, face to sunlight, face to stars, face to the dews of heaven, as
the faces of god-like races ever are.
You wind round a juniper grove--"cedars of Lebanon," the Old Testament
would call it. There is the silver tinkle of a bell; and the flocks come
down to the watering pools, flocks led by maidens, as in the days of
Rachael and Jacob; and the shepherds--only they call them "herders,"
fight for first place round the water pool, as they did in the days of
Rachael and Jacob. Then, you come to a walled spring where date palms
shade the ground. And the maidens are there, "drawing water from the
well," carrying water in ollas on their heads, bronzed statues of
perfect poise and perfect grace, daughters of the Desert, hard lovers,
hard haters, veiled as all mysteries are veiled.
You turn but a spur in the mountains: you dip into a valley smoking with
the dews of the morning; or come up a mesa,--and a winged horseman spurs
past, hair tied back by red scarf, pantaloons of white linen, sash of
rainbow colors; and you are amid the dwellings of men. Strings of red
chile like garlands of huge red corals hang against the sun-baked brick
or clay. Curs come out and bark at the heels of your horse--that is why
the Oriental always called an enemy "a dog." Pottery makers look up from
their kiln fires of sheep manure, at you, the remote passerby. The
basket workers weave and weave like the Three Fates of Life. One old
woman is so aged and wizened and infirm that she must sit inside her
basket to carry out the pattern of what life is to her; and the sunlight
strikes back from the heat-baked walls in a glare that stabs the eye;
and you hear the tinkle of the bells from the watering pools.
Then, suddenly, for the first time, you see It.
You have turned a spur of the Mountains, dipped into a valley, come up
on the Mesa into the sunlight, and there It is--the eternal mountains
with their eternal lavender veil round the valley like the tiered seats
of a coliseum, the mist like a theater drop curtain where you may paint
your own pictures of fancy, and in the midst of the great amphitheater
rises an island rock; and on the island rock is a grotto; and in the
grotto is the figure of the Mother of Christ--in purplish blue, of
course, as betokens eternal purity--and below the island of rock in the
midst of the amphitheater something swims into your ken that is neither
of Heaven nor earth. White, glaringly white as the very spotlessness of
Heaven, twin-towered as befitting the dual nature of man, flesh and
spirit; pointed in its towers and minarets and belfries, betokening the
reaching of the spirit of Man up to God; lions between the arches of the
roofed piazzas, as betokening the lion-hearted spirit of Man fighting
his enemies of Flesh and Spirit up to God!
Palms before arched white walls shut out the world--Peace and Seclusion
and Purity!
You dip into a valley, the scent of the cedars in your nostrils and
lungs, the peace of God in your heart. Then you come up to a high mesa
and you see the vision of the white symbol swimming between earth and
sky but always pointing skyward.
Where are you, anyway: in Persia amid floating palaces, on the Nile,
approaching the palaces of Allahabad in India, or coming up to Moorish
minarets and twin towns of the Alhambra in Spain?
Believe me, you are in neither Europe, Asia, nor Africa. You are in a
much despised land called "America," whence wealth and culture run off
to Europe, Asia and Africa, to find what they call "art" and
"antiquity."
It is October 3rd in Tucson, Arizona; not far from the borders of Old
Mexico as the rest of the world reckon distance. The rain has been
falling in torrents. Rain is not supposed to fall in the Desert, but it
has been coming down in slant torrents and the sky is reflected
everywhere in the roadside pools. The air is soft as rose petals, for
the altitude is only 2,000 feet; too high to be languid, too low for the
sting of autumn frosts.
We motor, first, through the old Spanish town--relics of a grandeur that
America does not know to-day, a grandeur more of spirit than display.
The old Spanish grandee never counted his dollars, nor measured up the
value of a meal to a guest. But he counted honor dear as the Virgin
Mary, and made a gamble of life, and hated tensely as he loved. The old
mansion houses are fallen in disrepute, to-day. They are given over, for
the most part to Chinese and Japanese merchants; but through the open
windows you can still see plazas and patios of inner courtyards, where
oleanders are in perpetual bloom and roses climb the trellis work, and
the parrot calls out "swear words" of Spanish pirate and highwayman. St.
Augustine Mission, where heroes shed martyr blood, is now a saloon and
dance hall, but where rags and tatters flaunted from the clothes lines
of negro and Japanese and Chinese tenant, I could not but think of the
torn flags that mark the most heroic action of regiments.
[Illustration: The Mission of the San Xavier at Tucson, Arizona, one of
the most ancient in the New World, has an almost Oriental aspect]
From the Spanish Town of Tucson, which any other nation would have
treasured as a landmark and capitalized in dollars for the tourist, you
pass modern mansions that wisely follow the Spanish-Moorish type of
architecture, most suited to Desert atmosphere.
Then you come on the Tucson Farms Company Irrigation project, now
sagebrush and cactus land put under the ditch from Santa Cruz River and
turned over to settlers from Old Mexico--who were driven out by the
Revolution--for $25 an acre. You see the lonely eyed woman pioneer
sitting at the door of the tent flap.
Moisture steams up from the river like a morning incense to the sun. The
Tucson Range of mountains shimmers. Giant cactus stand ghost-like,
centuries old, amid the mesquite bush; and in the columnar hole of the
cactus trees you see the holes where the little desert wren has pecked
through for water in a waterless season.
Then, before you know it, you are in the Papago Indian Reserve. The
finest basket makers of the world, these Papagoes are. They make baskets
of such close weave that they will hold water, and you see the Papago
Indian women with jars--ollas--of water on their head going up and down
from the water pools. Basket makers weave in front of the sun-baked
adobe walls where hang the red strings of chile like garlands. On the
whole, the Indian faces are very happy and good. They do not care for
wealth, these children of the Desert. Give them "this day their daily
bread," and they are content, and thank God.
Then the mountains close in a cup round the shimmering valley. In the
center of the valley rises an island of rock, the rock of the Grotto of
the Virgin; and a white dome and twin towers show, glare white, almost
unearthly, with arches pointing to Heaven, and lions in white all along
the roof typifying the strength that is of God. There is a dome in the
middle of the roof line--that is the Moorish influence brought in by
Spain. There are twin towers on each side; and in the towers on the
right hand side are three brass bells to call to work and matins and
vespers. It may be said here that the French Mission may always be known
by its single spire and cross; the Spanish Mission by its twin towers
and bells. The French Mission rings its bell. The Spanish Mission
strikes its bells with a hammer or gong. One utters cheer. The other
sounds a rich, low, mellow call to worship. The walls and pillars and
arches are all marble white; and you are looking on one of the most
ancient Missions of the New World--San Xavier del Bac, of Tucson,
Arizona.
The whole effect is so oriental as to be startling. The white dome might
be Indian or Persian, but the pointed arches and minarets are
unmistakably Moorish--that is, Moorish brought across by Spain. The
entrance is under an arched white wall, and the courtyard looks out
behind through arched white gateway to the distant mountains.
Here four sisters of St. Joseph conduct a school for the little
Papagoes; and what a school it is! It might do honor to the Alhambra.
Palms line the esplanade in front of the arched, walled entrance.
Collie dogs rise lazily under the deep embrasures of the arched plazas.
A parrot calls out some Spanish gibberish of bygone days. A snow-white
Persian kitten frisks its plumy tail across the brick-paved walk of the
inner patio; and across the courtyard I catch a glimpse of two Shetland
ponies nosing for notice over a fence beside an ancient Don Quixote nag
that evidently does duty for dignitaries above Shetland ponies. An air
of repose, of antiquity, of apartness, rests on the marble white
Mission, as of oriental dreams and splendor or European antiquity and
culture.
I ring the bell of the reception room to the right of the church
entrance. Not a sound but the echo of my own ring! I enter, cross
through the parlor and come on the Spanish patio or central courtyard.
What a place for prayers and meditation and the soul's repose! Arched
promenades line both sides of the inner court. Here Jesuit and
Franciscan monks have walked and prayed and meditated since the
Sixteenth Century. By the hum as of busy bees to the right, I locate the
schoolrooms, and come on the office of the Mother Superior Aquinias.
What a pity so many of us have an early impress of religion as of
vinegar aspect and harsh duty hard as flint and unhuman as a block of
wood. This Mother Superior is merry-faced and red-blooded and human and
dear. She evidently believes that goodness should be warmer, dearer,
truer, more attractive and kindly than evil; and all the little Indian
wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and human and red-blooded as
the Mother Superior.
A collie pup flounders round us up and down the court walk where the old
missionary monks suffered cruel martyrdom. Poll, the parrot, utters
sententious comment; and the Shetland ponies whinny greetings to their
mistress. All this does not sound like vinegar goodness, does it?
But it is when you enter the church that you get the real surprise.
Three times, the desertion of this Mission was forced by massacre and
pillage. Twice it was abandoned owing to the expulsion of Jesuit and
Franciscan by temporal power. For seventy years, the only inhabitants of
a temple stately as the Alhambra were the night bats, the Indian
herders, the border outlaws of the United States and Mexico. Yet, when
you enter, the walls are covered with wonderful mural painting. Saints'
statues stand about the altar, and grouped about the dome of the groined
ceiling are such paintings as would do honor to a European Cathedral.
The brick and adobe walls are from two to six feet thick. Not a nail has
ever been driven in the adobe edifice. The doors are of old wood in huge
panels mortised and dovetailed together. The latch is an iron bar carved
like a Damascus sword. The altar is a mass of gilding and purple. To be
sure, the saints' fingers have been hacked off by wandering cowboy and
outlaw and Indian; but you find that sort of vandalism in the British
Museum and Westminster Abbey. The British Museum had careful
custodians. For over seventy years, this ancient Mission stood open to
the winds of heaven and the torrential rains and the midnight bats. Only
the faithfulness of an old Indian chief kept the sacred vessels from
desecration. When the fathers were expelled for political reasons, old
Jose, of the Papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles till
the _padres_ should return, when he brought them from hiding.
Gothic temples are usually built in one long, clear arch. The roof of
San Xavier del Bac is a series of the most perfect groined domes, with
the deep embrasures of the windows on each side colored shell tints in
wave-lines. Because of the height and depth of the windows, the light is
wonderfully clear and soft. The church is used now only by Indian
children; and did Indian children ever have such a magnificent temple in
which to worship? To the left of the entrance is a wonderful old
baptismal font of pure copper, which has been the envy of all
collectors. One wonders looking at the ancient vessel whether it was
baptized with the blood of all the martyrs who died for San
Xavier--Francesca Garcez, for instance? There is a window in this
baptistry, too, that is the envy of critics and collectors. It is set
more deeply in the wall than any window in the Tower of London, with
pointed Gothic top that sends shafts of sunlight clear across the
earthen floor.
From the baptistry I ascended to the upper towers. The stairs are old
timber set in adobe and brick, through solid walls of a thickness of
six feet. The view from the belfries above is wonderful. You see the
mountains shimmering in the haze. You see the little square adobe
matchbox houses of Papago Indians, with the red chile hanging against
the wall, and the women coming from the spring, and the men husking the
corn. You wonder if when San Xavier was besieged and besieged and
besieged yet again by Apache and Navajo and Pima, the beleaguered
priests took refuge in these towers, and came down to die, only to save
their Mission. Against Indian arms, it may be said, San Xavier would be
an impregnable fortress. Yet the priests of San Xavier were three times
utterly destroyed by Indians.
When you come to seek the history of San Xavier, you will find it as
difficult to get, as a guide out to the Mission. As a purely tourist
resort, leaving out all piety and history, it should be worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year to Tucson. Yet it took me the better part
of a day to find out that San Xavier is only nine miles and not eighteen
from Tucson.
And this is typical of the difficulty of getting the real history of the
place. Jesuit Relations of New France have been published in every kind
of edition, cheap and dear. Jesuit Relations of New Spain, who knows?
The Franciscans succeeded the Jesuits; and the Franciscans do not read
the history of the Jesuits. It comes as a shock to know that Spanish
_padres_ were on the Colorado and Santa Cruz at the time Jacques
Cartier was exploring the St. Lawrence. We have always believed that
Spanish _conquistadores_ slaughtered the Indians most ruthlessly. Study
the mission records and you get another impression, an impression of
penniless, friendless, unprotected friars "footing" it 600, 700, 900
miles from Old Mexico to the inmost recesses of the Desert canyons. In
late days, when a friar set out on his journey, twenty mounted men acted
as his escort; and that did not always save him from death; for there
were stretches of the journey ninety miles without water, infested every
mile of the way by Apaches; and these stretches were known as the
Journeys of Death. When you think of the ruthless slaughter of the
_conquistadores_, think also of the friars tramping the parched sand
plains for 900 miles.
While Fray Juan de la Asuncion and Pedro Nadol are the first
missionaries known in Arizona about 1538, Father Kino was the great
missionary of 1681 to 1690, officiating at the Arizona Missions of San
Xavier del Bac and Tumacacori. There are reports of the Jesuits being
among the Apaches as early as 1630--say early as the days of the Jesuits
in Canada; but who the missionaries were, I am unable to learn.
Rebellion and massacre devastated the Missions in 1680 and in 1727; but
by 1754, the missionaries were back at San Xavier and had twenty-nine
stations commanding seventy-three different pueblos. In 1767, for
political reasons, the Jesuits suffered expulsion; and the Franciscans
came in--tramping, as told before, 600 and 900 miles. It was under the
Franciscans that the present structure of San Xavier was built. Garcez
was the most famous of the Franciscans. He spent seven years among the
Pimas and Papagoes and Yumas; but one hot midsummer Sunday--July 17,
1781--during early mass, the Indians rose and slew four priests, all the
Spanish soldiers and all the Spanish servants. Garcez was among the
martyrs. San Xavier, as it at present stands, is supposed to have been
completed in 1797; but in 1827-9, came another political turnover and
all foreign missionaries were expelled. Tumacacori and San Xavier were
always the most important of the Arizona Missions. Originally quite as
magnificent a structure as San Xavier, Tumacacori has been allowed to go
to ruin. Of late, it has been made a United States monument. It is a
day's journey from Tucson.
To describe San Xavier is quite impossible, except through canvas and
photograph. There is something intangibly spiritual and unearthly in its
very architecture; and this is the spirit in which it was originally
built. At daybreak, a bell called the builders to prayers of
consecration. At nightfall, vesper bells sent the laborer home with the
blessing of the church. For the most part, the workers were Mexicans and
Indians; and as far as can be gathered from the annals, voluntary
workers. The Papagoes and Pimas at that time numbered 5,000, of whom 500
lived round the Missions, the rest spending the summers hunting in the
mountains.
[Illustration: On top of the world--a Moki city on a Mesa in the Painted
Desert. At the left are the ends of a ladder leading from an underground
council chamber]
When the American Government took over Arizona, San Xavier went under
the diocese of New Mexico. From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Tucson was 600
miles across desert mountains and canyons, every foot of the way infested
by Apache warriors; and the heroism of that trail was marked by the same
courage and constancy as signalized the founding and maintenance of the
other early Spanish Missions.
It would be a mistake to say that San Xavier has been restored.
Restoration implies innovation; and San Xavier stands to-day as it stood
in the sixteen hundreds, when Father Kino, the famous mathematician and
Jesuit from Bavaria, came wandering up from the Missions of Lower
California, preaching to the Yumas and Pimas of the hot, smoking hot,
Gila Desert, and held mass in Casa Grande, the Great House or Garden of
Eden of the Indian's Morning Glow. A lucky thing it is that restoration
did not imply change in San Xavier; for the Mission floats in the
shimmering desert air, unearthly, eerie, unreal, a thing of beauty and
dreams rather than latter day life, white as marble, twin-towered, roof
domed and so dazzling in the sunlight to the unaccustomed eye that you
somehow know why rows of restful, drowsy palms were planted in line
along the front of the wall.
Perhaps it is that it comes on you as such a complete surprise. Perhaps
it is the desert atmosphere in this cup of the mountains; but all the
other missions of the Southwest are adobe gray, or earth color showing
through a veneer of drab whitewash.
There is the giant, century-old desert cactus twisted and gnarled with
age like the trees in Dante's Inferno, but with bird nests in the
pillared trunks, where little wrens peck through the bark for water. You
look again. A horseman has just dismounted beneath the shade of a fine
old twisted oak; but beyond the oak the vision is there, glare,
dazzling, white, twin-towered and arched, floating in mid-air, a vision
of beauty and dreams.
Life seems to sleep at San Xavier. The mountains hemming in the valley
seem to sleep. The shimmering blue valley sleeps. The sunlight sleeps
against the glare white walls. The huge old mortised door to the church
stands open, all silent and asleep. The door of the Mission parlor
stands open--sunlight asleep on a checkered floor. You enter. Your
footsteps have an echo of startling impudence--modern life jumping back
into past centuries! You ring the gong. The sound stabs the sleeping
silence, and you almost expect to see ghosts of Franciscan friar and
Jesuit priest come walking along the arcaded pavement of the inner
courtyard to ask you what all this modern noise is about; but no ghosts
come. In fact, no one comes. San Xavier is all asleep. You cross through
the parlor to the inner patio or courtyard, arched all around three
sides with the fourth side looking through a wonderfully high arched
gateway out to the far mountains. Polly turns on her perch in her cage,
and goes back to sleep. The white Persian kitten frisks his
white-plumed tail; and also turns over and goes to sleep. Two collie
dogs don't even emit a "woof." They arch their pointed noses with the
fine old aristocratic air of the unspoken question: what are you of the
Twenty Century doing wandering back into the mystery and mysticism and
quietude of the religious sixteen hundred? But if you keep on going, you
will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the little Pimas and
Papagoes in the schoolrooms.
San Xavier, architecturally, is sheer delight to the eye. The style is
almost pure Moorish. The yard walls are arched in harmony with the
arched outline of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will notice
the Spanish lion at the intersection of all the roof arches. In front of
the Mission buildings is a walled space of some sixty by forty feet,
where the Indians used to assemble for discussion of secular matters
before worship. On the front wall in high relief are placed the arms of
St. Francis of Assisi, and in the sacristry to the right of the altar
you will find mural drawings and a painting of Saint Ignatius. Thus San
Xavier claims as her founders and patrons both Franciscan and Jesuit.
This is easily explained. The Franciscans came up overland across the
Desert from the City of Mexico. The Jesuits came up inland from their
Mission on the Gulf of California. Father Kino, the Jesuit, from a
Bavarian university, was the first missionary to hold services among the
Pimas and Papagoes, and if he did not lay the foundations of San
Xavier, then they were laid by his immediate successors. The escutcheon
of the Franciscans on the wall is a twisted cord and a cross on which
are nailed the arms of the Christ and the arm of St. Francis. The Christ
arm is bare. The Franciscan's arm is covered.
Unlike other Missions built of adobe, San Xavier is of stone and brick.
It is 100 by thirty feet. The transept on each side of the nave runs out
twenty-one feet square. The roof above the nave is supported by groined
arches from door to altar. The cupola above the altar is fifty feet to
the dome. The other vaults are only thirty feet high. The windows are
high in the clearstory and set so deeply in the casement that the light
falling on the mural paintings and fresco work is sifted and softened.
Practically all the walls, cupola, dome, transept, nave, are covered
with mural paintings. There is the coming of the Spirit to the
Disciples. There is the Last Supper. There is the Conception. There is
the Rosary. There is the Hidden Life of the Lord.
The main altar has evidently been constructed by the Jesuits; for the
statue of St. Francis Xavier stands below the Virgin between figures of
St. Peter and St. Paul and God, the Creator. On the groined arches of
the dome are figures of the Wise Men, the Flight to Egypt, the
Shepherds, the Annunciation. Gilded arabesques colored in Moorish shell
tints adorn the main altar. Statues of the saints stand in the alcoves
and niches of the pillars and vaults. Two small doors lead up to the
towers from the main door. Look well at these doors and stairways. Not a
nail has been driven. The doors are mortised of solid pieces. The first
flight of stairs leads to the choir. Around the choir are more mural
paintings. Two more twists of the winding stair; and you are in the
belfry. Twenty-two more steps bring you to the summit of the tower--a
galleried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground, where you may look
out on the whole world.
Pause for a moment, and look out. The mountains shimmer in their pink
mists. The sunlight sleeps against the adobe walls of the scattered
Indian house. You can hear the drone of the children from the
schoolrooms behind the Mission. You can see the mortuary chapel down to
the right and the lions supporting the arches of the Mission roof.
Father Kino was a famous European scholar and gentleman. He threw aside
scholarship. He threw aside comfort. He threw aside fame; and he came to
found a Mission amid arabs of the American Desert. The hands that
wrought these paintings on the walls were not the hands of bunglers.
They were the hands of artists, who wrought in love and devotion. Three
times, San Xavier was dyed in martyr blood by Indian revolt.
Priests, whose names even have been lost in the chronicles, were
murdered on the altars here, thrown down the stairs, cut to pieces in
their own Mission yard. Before a death which they coveted as glory, what
a life they must have led. To Tucson Mission was nine miles; but to
Tumacacori was eighty; to Old Mexico, 900. Occasionally, they had escort
of twelve soldiers for these long trips; but the soldiers' vices made so
much trouble for the holy fathers that the missionaries preferred to
travel alone, or with only a lay brother. Sandaled missionaries tramped
the cactus desert in June, when the heat was at its height; and they
traversed the mountains when winter snows filled all the passes. They
have not even left annals of their hardships. You know that in such a
year, Father Kino tramped from the Gulf of California to the Gila, and
from the Gila to the Rio Grande. You know in such another year, nineteen
priests were slain in one day. On such another date, a missionary was
thrown over a precipice; or slain on the high altar of San Xavier. And
always, the priests opposed the outrages of the soldiery, the injustice
of the ruling rings. Father Kino petitions the royal house of Spain in
1686 that converts be not forcibly seized and "dragged off to slavery in
the mines, where they were buried alive and seldom survived the abuse."
He gets a respite from the King for all converts for twenty years. He
does not permit converts to be taken as slaves in the mines or slaves in
the pearl fisheries; so the ruling rings of Old Mexico obstruct his
enterprises, lie about his Missions, slander him to the patrons who
supply him with money, and often reduce his missions to desperate
straits; but wherever there is a Mission, Father Kino sees to it that
there are a few goats. The goats supply milk and meat.
The fathers weave their own clothing, grow their own food, and hold the
fort against the enemy as against the subtle designs of the Devil. These
fathers mix their own mortar, make their own bricks, cut their own
beams, lay the plaster with their own hands. Now, remember that the
priests who did all this were men who had been artists, who had been
scholars, who had been court favorites of Europe. Father Kino was,
himself, of the royal house of Bavaria. But jealousy left the Missions
unprotected by the soldiers. Soldier vices roused the Indians to fury;
and the priests were the first to fall victims. Go across the Moki
Desert. You will find peach orchards planted by the friars; but you
cannot find the graves of the dead priests. We considered the Apaches a
dangerous lot as late as 1880. In 1686, in 1687, in 1690, Father Kino
crossed Apache land alone. I cannot find any record of the Spanish
Missions at this period ever receiving more than $15,000 a year for
their support. Ordinarily, a missionary's salary was about $150 a year.
Out of that, if he employed soldiers, he must pay their wages and keep.
Well, by and by, the jealousy of the governing ring, kept from abusing
the Indians by the priests, brought about the expulsion of the Jesuits.
The Franciscans took up the work where the Jesuits left off. Came
another political upheaval. The Franciscans were driven out. San
Xavier's broken windows blew to the rains and winds of the seven
heavens. Cowboys, outlaws, sheep herders, housed beneath mural
paintings and frescoes that would have been the pride of a European
palace. Came American occupation; and San Xavier was--not restored--but
redeemed. It was completely cleaned out and taken over by the church as
a Mission for the Indians.
To-day, no one worships in San Xavier but the little Indian scholars.
Look at the drawings of Christ, of the Virgin, of the Wise Men! Look at
the dreams of faith wrought into the aged and beautiful walls!
Frankly--let us be brutally frank and truthful, was it all worth while?
Wouldn't Kino have done better to have continued to grace the courts of
Bavaria?
In the old days, Pima and Papago roped their wives as in a hunt, and if
the fancy prompted, abused them to death. On the walls of San Xavier is
the Annunciation to the Virgin, another view of birth and womanhood. In
the old days, the Indians killed a child at birth, if they didn't want
it. On the walls of San Xavier are pictured the wise men adoring a
Child. Spanish rings and trusts wanted little slaves of industry as
American rings and trusts want them to-day. Behold a Christ upon the
walls setting free the slaves! Was it all worth while? It depends on
your point of view and what you want. Though the winds of the seven
heavens blew through San Xavier for seventy years and bats habited the
frescoed arches, it stands to-day as it stood two centuries ago, a thing
unearthly, of visions and dreams; pointing the way, not to gain, but to
goodness; making for a little space of time on a little space of Desert
earth what a peaceful heaven life might be.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Through Our Unknown Southwest, by Agnes C. Laut