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 wit