years ago. The pueblo, once the
largest in New Mexico, was deserted in 1840; and its great quadrangle of
many-storied Indian houses is in utter ruin; but above their gray mounds
still tower the walls of the old church which was built before there was
a Saxon in New England. You see the "mud brick," as some contemptuously
call the adobe, is not such a contemptible thing, even for braving the
storms of centuries. There was a church at the pueblo of Nambe by 1642.
In 1662 Fray Garcia de San Francisco founded a church at El Paso del
Norte, on the present boundary-line between Mexico and the United
States,--a dangerous frontier mission, hundreds of miles alike from the
Spanish settlements in Old and New Mexico.

The missionaries also crossed the mountains east of the Rio Grande, and
established missions among the Pueblos who dwelt in the edge of the
great plains. Fray Geronimo de la Llana founded the noble church at
Cuaray about 1642; and soon after came those at Abo, Tenabo, and Tabira
(better, though incorrectly, known now as The Gran Quivira). The
churches at Cuaray, Abo, and Tabira are the grandest ruins in the United
States, and much finer than many ruins which Americans go abroad to see.
The second and larger church at Tabira was built between 1660 and 1670;
and at about the same time and in the same region--though many thirsty
miles away--the churches at Tajique[16] and Chilili. Acoma, as you know,
had a permanent missionary by 1629; and he built a church. Besides all
these, the pueblos of Zia, Santa Ana, Tesuque, Pojoaque, San Juan, San
Marcos, San Lazaro, San Cristobal, Alameda, Santa Cruz, and Cochiti had
each a church by 1680. That shows something of the thoroughness of
Spanish missionary work. A century before our nation was born, the
Spanish had built in one of our Territories half a hundred permanent
churches, nearly all of stone, and nearly all for the express benefit of
the Indians. That is a missionary record which has never been equalled
elsewhere in the United States even to this day; and in all our country
we had not built by that time so many churches for ourselves.

A glimpse at the life of the missionary to New Mexico in the days before
there was an English-speaking preacher in the whole western hemisphere
is strangely fascinating to all who love that lonely heroism which does
not need applause or companionship to keep it alive. To be brave in
battle or any similar excitement is a very easy thing. But