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Show CHAPTER XX. TEMPLES OF THE DESEBT. Among all the mission churches built by the Spanish missionary fathers, within the present limits of the United States, extending from the meridian of San An tonio, Tex., to the Presidio of San Francisco, and em bracing such examples as San Gabriel, outside of Los Angeles, and the mission church of San Jose, near Sari Diego, built by Padre Junipero Serra of whom Bret Harte and Helen Jackson wrote so sympathetically there is not one superior architecturally, and there are few equal to San Xavier del Bac. the church of the gen tle Papagoes. The drive from Tucson to the mission is nine miles. To your left, within sound of its gurgling waters, flows the Santa Cruz, that for 400 years has filled a prominent place in the real and legendary history of Arizona. Springing from the floor of the valley, the Tuscon range of mountains and hills rise majestically to the right, and stretch southward to an interminable distance. Far away to the southwest miles and miles away the " Twin Buttes," inflated with copper, tower in imperial isolation. Five miles from Tucson the road suddenly rises, and at once the bell- shaped dome and the Moorish towers of the church of the Papagoes break the sky line to the south. Another mile, and we enter the reservation and are received with an infernal disson ance of barks, snarls and growls from a yelping pack of unpedigreed curs of low estate. The road winds through and around wikiups and cabins, past the humble grave yard where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, |
