The interval of six years between this letter and the date (1699) usually given as that of the present church was so patently only the final struggle of the spent force of enmity that it hardly seems probable the Ácomas would take the trouble to demolish their neglected church, especially to the extent of changing its site “a few feet to the south.”[18] We may, therefore, assume that by 1699 the shrine needed extensive repairs, but that in substance we can visit to-day the basilica of Ramírez. It measures 150 feet in length and has walls that are 60 feet high and 10 feet thick. Timbers 40 feet long and 14 inches through support the roof and make a handsome ceiling, for between them, laid in herringbone design, are the stalks of the yucca, colored blue, yellow or red, making a close rush mat visible between the beams. The entrance is by a wooden door at the east, and a gallery just inside is reached by a plain flight of steps close to the north wall. There are of course no seats, and the only decoration of the nave is a crude red _dado_ of paint reaching perhaps three feet from the floor. This and the bare white wall above are freshly done each year before the great fiesta of St. Stephen on September second. At the western end the chancel is raised by three shallow steps. Behind the altar is a gaudily painted Mexican screen done in 1802. To the left hangs the miracle-working painting of San José sent to the Mission by Charles II of Spain, it is said. On the opposite wall is another holy picture painted on buffalo hide by some Mexican craftsmen. The San José painting was for years a serious cause of dissension and almost of war between Ácoma and Laguna, so that it was amusing to have my host pull me by the sleeve and say, _sotto voce_, pointing to our chauffeur, “Don’t speak of it, he’s Laguna.” To one who has seen the very beautiful decoration of walls and chancel in the Laguna church, it seems unlikely that any envy of Ácoma now exists in that village. In the autumn of 1924, the Committee for the Reconstruction and Preservation of New Mexico Mission Churches received a gift from a generous citizen of Denver, Colorado, that enabled them to repair the roof of Ácoma church. Their report repeats graphically the ancient story of the toilful work involved. Once again might be seen the laboring procession of heavy-laden Indians and patient burros carrying all the material needed up the steep trail three hundred and fifty-seven feet to the top of the mesa. Once there, it must yet be hoisted sixty feet higher to the roof of the shrine itself. So low was the water in the reservoirs that that also had to be brought from springs in the plain below. The statistics are: 50,000 pounds of water, 24,000 pounds of cement, 72,000 pounds of sand, 5,000 pounds of felt-roofing, 5,000 pounds of asphalt, and 35,000 feet of boards for scaffolding.[19]