l, and it would be well for us to get thither before the
heat of the day."

I protested that the rest and the bunch of grapes had so much refreshed me
that I felt equal to a long walk, and we moved on.

"What a splendid garden!" I exclaimed for the third or fourth time as we
entered an alley festooned with trailing flowers and grape-vines from
which the fruit hung in thick clusters.

"All Quipai is a garden," said the abbe, proudly. "We have fruit and
flowers and cereals all the year round, thanks to the great _azequia_
(aqueduct) which the Incas built and I restored. And such fruit! Let him
taste a _chirimoya ma fille cherie_."

From a tree about fifteen feet high Angela plucked a round green fruit,
not unlike an apple, but covered with small knobs and scales. Then she
showed me how to remove the skin, which covered a snow-white juicy pulp of
exquisite fragrance and a flavor that I hardly exaggerated in calling
divine. It was a fruit fit for the gods, and so I said.

"We owe it all to the great _azequia_," observed the abbe. "See, it feeds
these rills and fills those fountains, waters our fields, and makes the
desert bloom like the rose and the dry places rejoice. And we have not
only fruit and flowers, but corn, coffee, cocoa, yuccas, potatoes, and
almost every sort of vegetable."

"Quipai is a land of plenty and a garden of delight."

"A most apt description, and so long as the great _azequia_ is kept in
repair and the system of irrigation which I have established is maintained
it will remain a land of plenty and a garden of delight."

"And if any harm should befall the _azequia_?"

"In that case, and if our water-supply were to fail, Quipai, as you see it
now, would cease to exist. The desert, which we are always fighting and
have so far conquered, would regain the mastery, and the mission become
what I found it, a little oasis at the foot of the Cordillera, supporting
with difficulty a few score families of naked Indians. One of these days,
if you are so disposed, you shall follow the course of the _azequia_ and
see for yourself with what a marvellous reservoir, fed by Andean snows,
Nature has provided us. But more of this another time. Look! Yonder is San
Cristobal, our capital as I sometimes call it, though little more than a
village."

The abbe said truly. It was little more than a village; but as gay, as
picturesque, and as bright as a scene in an opera--two double rows of
painted houses forming a la