“Oh, what a strange thing is this!” the padre continues devoutly. “After so many ages spent in heaven in company of the angels, of most holy men, and of virgins the most pure; and, perhaps, also in the company of my worthy and esteemed friend and patron Don Vincente Carvajal y Calvo, who died a few years ago in San Lucar of Xeres, (bequeathing me certain arrobas of dry wine, of a class I greatly esteem,—for which act he deserved to be canonised, and, I have no doubt, is,) the said Don Vincente Carvajal y Calvo being, moreover, a man of the purest and holiest thoughts, (Dios mio! what a puchero that man always had on his table!) this holy woman comes here—to these wild and remote regions; this holy woman, (who died fifteen hundred years ago,) abandoning the company of angels, of holy men, and sanctified women and virgins, and also of Don Vincente Carvajal y Calvo, (that worthy man!)—comes here, I say, where there are neither pucheros, nor garbanzos, nor dry wine, nor sweet wine, neither of Xeres, nor of Val de Peñas, nor of Peralta; where” (sobbed the padre, and bellowed the last word) “there is—nothing either to eat or to drink. Valgame Purissima Maria! And what is the name of this holy woman? the world will ask,” continues Venabides. “Santa Clara of Carmona is her name, one well known in my native country, who leaves heaven and all its joys, wends her way to the distant wilds of New Spain, and spends years in inducting the savage people to the holy faith. Truly a pious work, and pleasing to God!”[6] Thus spoke Venabides the Franciscan, and no doubt he believed what he said; and many others in Old Spain were fools enough to believe it too, for the shaven heads flocked over in greater numbers, and the cry was ever “still they come.” Along the whole extent of the table-lands, not an Indian tribe but was speedily visited by the preaching friars and monks; and, in less than a century after the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, these hardy and enthusiastic frayles had pushed their way into the inhospitable regions of New Mexico, nearly two thousand miles distant from the valley of Anahuac. How they succeeded in surmounting the natural obstacles presented by the wild and barren deserts they traversed; how they escaped the infinite peril they encountered at every step, at the hands of the savage inhabitants of the country, with whose language they were totally unacquainted, is sufficient puzzle to those who, in the present day, have attempted a journey in the same regions. However, it is impossible not to admire the hardihood of these holy pioneers of civilisation, who, totally unfitted by their former mode of life for undergoing such hardships as they must have anticipated, threw themselves into the wilderness with fearless and stubborn zeal.