they found it unharmed, and christened it "Our Lady of the Remedios." They built her a great church, and she was the patron saint of Mexico until the Guadaloupe arose to contest the devotion of the populace with her. The war was long and bitter, but the Indians outnumbered the Spaniards ten to one, though conquered, and they had not a single Indian saint in the calendar—they have not one to this day, though many saints have been canonized in Mexico—and a brown-skinned Virgin was something worth fighting for. The Guadaloupe triumphed, and to this day her shrine is sought annually by the Indians of all Central Mexico, while that of our Lady of the Remedios is almost deserted.
Subsequent to the third apparition, the Virgin of Guadaloupe appeared to others, and directed where each structure should be raised. On the top of the hill, where she first appeared to Juan Diego, they raised a magnificent chapel in her honor: at the foot of the hill where the spring burst out, they erected a chapel over the well, and a small but costly church in the rear; and where she delivered to him the roses inclosing the miraculous picture of herself, they built a church which, though despoiled of much of its former wealth of gold and silver, is still a mine of the precious metals, a marvel to visitors from all parts of the world, and in the eyes of the poor Indians of Mexico the holiest shrine on earth.
For two centuries, it was no uncommon thing for one hundred thousand people to be gathered in and around the church and chapels of Guadaloupe on the anniversary of her apparition to Juan Diego, and from the 1st to the 15th of December, the place was one of daily resort for thousands on thousands of devout worshipers. A
