Perhaps no other modern task in the pueblo country has so impressed upon the minds of present-day workers the enormous labor or the devotion to a humanistic ideal such as Fray Juan Ramírez inaugurated at Ácoma more than three hundred years ago. There were cloisters and conventual rooms adjacent to this church which tell of its having been the centre of religious work, and altogether it is one of the most remarkable of the ancient missions; but of it we have few genuine records. That, at one time, the patron saint was changed to San Pedro, the bell in the northeast tower bears witness by its inscription, “San Pedro, 1710.” Subsequently St. Stephen resumed his sway. To-day the cloister is only a bare promenade of three sides enclosed by walls on the ground level into which a few unglazed windows admit scant light. Upon the dirt floor more or less littered with outcast odds and ends you are shown the hugest of beams, lying prone, which it is claimed came from the early church, and the marvel is how anything so gigantic and unwieldy was ever got up the steep crag, even after it had been brought across the desert from San Mateo. Someone tried to tell us that the Indians waited till rains had filled the arroyos of the mountain slopes so that these heavy timbers could be floated at least part way down the long journey; but my Albuquerque informant, who owns great cattle ranches in the vicinity of San Mateo, assured me that this was impossible, since there are never streams sufficient for any such purpose. He felt sure of the veracity of the Indians, who say that after a _viga_ for a church has been cut and smoothed, it would be sacrilege to let it touch the ground; it must somehow be carried all the way by men. He knew that the _vigas_ for the houses were borne upon the shoulders of men. A pleasanter walk than that within the cloister may be taken upon its flat and unsheltered roof. From there one looks down into the tiny and now very pathetic garden patio in which one moribund peach tree alone stands upright. From there too, he may lift his eyes in rapt admiration to the splendid panorama of the great plain and the encircling mountains. Above the cloister and built upon its corner, there is a charming loggia with a hand-carved wooden railing of simple but attractive design. Here again the view is inspiring, and one likes to fancy those self-sacrificing priests refreshing themselves at the quiet end of day by resting there and taking into their wearied spirits the peace of so healing an aspect of nature. [Illustration: THE CHURCH, ÁCOMA _Bolton_]