Just before reaching the first of these towns, the road
passes over a coarse rock mass, which weathers into spheroidal shells.
At Jilmeca and some other points along the day's route the rock over
which we passed was a white tufaceous material loaded with streaks of
black flint. Sometimes this black flint passes into chert and chalcedony
of blue and purple tints. Here and there, along the mountain sides,
we caught glimpses of rock exposures, which looked snow-white in the
distance. Between Jilmeca and San Felipe there was a pretty brook, with
fine cypresses along the banks, and a suspension bridge of great logs.
Having passed through San Felipe and San Miguel, a pleasant road,
through a gorge, brought us to the valley in which Teposcolula lies. The
great convent church, historically interesting, is striking in size and
architecture. The priest, an excellent man, is a pure-blooded Mixtec
indian, talking the language as his mother tongue. With great pride
he showed us about the building, which was once a grand Dominican
monastery. The old carved wooden cupboard for gold and silver articles,
used in the church service, is fine work. The gold and silver articles
for which it was built have long since disappeared. In the _patio_ are
many old paintings, most of which are badly damaged, and some of which
have been repaired with pieces cut from other pictures, not at all like
the missing piece. Among these pictures is a series of scenes from the
life of Santo Domingo. Of the figures in the church, two are fairly
good; one, which is famous, represents Our Lady of the Rosary. In a
little chapel are buried the remains of the old friars; here also is a
beautiful old carved confessional. In front of the old church is a great
court surrounded by a stone wall, which is surmounted here and there
with little, pointed, square pillars. To the right of the church is a
mass of masonry, in reddish-brown freestone, consisting of a series of
arches, now more or less in ruins. When the convent was at the height
of its splendor, the crowd of worshippers was too large for the church
itself, and these beautiful arches were erected to receive the overflow.
In the church itself, the plaster in the domes of the towers and the
coloring on the walls and domes had chipped and fallen, on account of
the earthquake, the day before. In the ruins of the upper rooms of the
convent proper, stone and mortar, dislodged from the decaying walls by
the same shocks, l