Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/528

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508
OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES.

still hang in one of the towers. The space, terminating in a scrolled gable, between the towers is enriched with escutcheons and rampant lions, wreathed in foliage. Niches hold grotesque broken statues, and complicated pilasters flank the entrance doorway, the whole formed in stucco upon a basis of moulded bricks. Where a portion has fallen away it can be seen that the pilasters are constructed upon or held together by a centre consisting of a stick of timber.

The designer, whoever he may have been, was inspired by Venetian-Byzantine traditions. It is roofed with numerous simple domes and half-domes. The interior of these, frescoed with angels and evangelists, the chancel walls, almost covered with gilding, but stained and battered, and the painted and gilded lions on the chancel rails, recall to the least observant Saint Mark's at Venice. The style is not quite consistently carried out, however. A later rococo decoration, as exuberant as the vagaries of East Indian work, mingles with and at places overrides it. A Henri II. candlestick will give a certain idea of the pattern of the columns.

The date has disappeared from the façade, but it is believed to be about 1768, and the present edifice was built on the ruins of a former one, going back much nearer to 1654, when the mission to the Papagos was first begun. Large angels, with bannerets, their draperies formed of papier-maché or gummed muslin, are attached to the main chancel piers; and a painted and gilded Virgin, with a long face, and hair brushed up from a high forehead, as in the sculptures of Jean Goujon, looks down from a high altar niche.

All within is of a mediæval richness and obscurity. All without is broad sunshine falling upon the peaceful Papago village. A few old men trudge about, concern-