584
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
to waste. One beautiful old convent that I visited in Queretaro, that of San Augustin, had all of the arches of the upper and lower corridors, surrounding the patio, of elaborately carved stone. Washwomen were pursuing their avocation about the central fountain, and donkeys wandered in and out of the abandoned ground-floor rooms; but they are not all thus deserted. There is occasionally a convent which is still put to valuable uses. Some have been converted into hotels, like the Hotel del Jardin, in the City of Mexico, which is the old refectory of the Franciscan Convent, and built around the beautiful old convent garden which gives it its name.
The Hotel Zacatecano, at Zacatecas, is another converted convent. To the American the building itself is a most delightful surprise. It was a portion of the church property confiscated under Juarez in 1859, and is a most beautiful specimen of Moorish architecture. It is about three centuries old, having been begun in 1576 and completed in 1596.
One realizes the ancientness of these border cities of Mexico, with their convents and churches, when one stops to reflect that Christian church bells were ringing in Chihuahua and Zacatecas nearly fifty years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock; and not only in Old Mexico, but on what is now our own side of the Rio Grande, at Yslete, Tex., as well as at Santa Fe, N. M., not much later, and long before the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving.
But to return to my convent. It is built around an open court or patio, entered from the street by means of an arched and paved carriage-way, and surrounded on both the lower and upper stories by arched corridors, open on the inner side, around which all of the rooms are ranged, opening upon it by means of great, heavy, wooden double doors, both the jambs and lintels of which are of solid stone, with caps supported by carved stone brackets. The arches of the corridors are the most beautiful part of the structure.
The pillars supporting the arches, and the arches themselves, are of carved stone, Hispano-Morisco and Aztec symbols appearing conjointly in the decorations; pilasters, representing the rising flame of the Aztec sacred fires, being cut in relief upon the face of the pillars, with mystic Arabic designs above. Even in the City of Mexico itself no such beautiful court as this exists.
Both court and corridors are paved with tile, as are all of the rooms in the house as well. Trees, shrubs and flowering plants of many kinds are arranged about the patio, set in earthenware vases, tubs and casks, and an octagonal jardiniere, with its shelves similarly filled, rises in a pyramid in the middle, crowned with a statue representing, one would imagine, the Mexican Minerva, her head adorned with a chaplet of cactus leaves, and a sword in her hand.
The roof of the building is flat, with great domes rising on two sides and smaller ones at the .four corners. The walls are fully four feet through, and the rooms have lofty ceilings and are much larger than in most ^first-class American hotels. So it seems the monks were not cramped for room when within the confines of their cells.
Heavy shutters, made of some wood which, like that of the doors, is seemingly as hard as iron, close the double windows. When these shutters are closed and barred, and the key (nearly a foot long), turned in the rusty lock, which one is sure no burglar’s tools can pick, on account of the weight of the key if for no other reason, one feels as secure against intrusion from the evilly disposed as though in a veritable fortress. In fact these ancient convents and churches served a double purpose in the old days, being places of refuge for the people—actually fortresses of defense—as well as religious retreats, and their strength was often put to the test, even up to a very recent period.
At Guadelupe, a suburb of Zacatecas, five miles distant, an old convent is converted into a hospicio para ?iinos —an asylum for boys—where two hundred orphans are learning all sorts of trades, etc., besides receiving a regular schooling in text books.
Don Jose M. Mirandi, a very courtly and handsome gentleman, and a man of great wealth, and who, as I understand, acts in this capacity through philanthropy