These two Missions are usually all the hurrying tourist sees; but an hour more, if you are in an automobile, is enough to afford a glance at the other two, which, if less interesting, are still a pleasant adventure. The Third (6 miles from San Antonio) is Mission _San Juan Capistrano_ (Saint John of Capistrano, in Italy), and the Fourth is _San Francisco de la Espada_ (Saint Francis of the Sword). The last has undergone some restoration to fit it for the resident priest, who ministers to a Mexican flock quartered roundabout. The entire round of the Missions can be easily done by motor car in half a day; but take a day to it, if you can spare the time, picnic somewhere by the river, and do the beautiful old places with leisure and reverence. Surely one can do worse things, to quote Sidney Lanier, “than to steal out here from town ... and dream back the century and a half of strange, lonesome, devout, hymn-haunted and Indian-haunted years that have trailed past these walls.” Annually during the last week of April, there is held in San Antonio an open air carnival called the Fiesta San Jacinto. The name commemorates the decisive battle of San Jacinto, fought April 21, 1836, between Mexicans and Texans, and ending the War of Texan Independence. Elaborate celebrations mark the festival, which is almost as well known in the Southwest as the New Orleans Mardi Gras. NOTE: Readers interested in particulars of the history of the San Antonio Missions will be repaid by consulting the valuable work of Miss Adina DeZavala, entitled: “History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions in and Around San Antonio.” CHAPTER XV IN THE COUNTRY OF THE GIANT CACTUS There are two Arizonas. There is that wide, breezy plateau region of the north, a mile and more above sea level, where our travels so far have been; and there is the much lower desert region of the south slanting downward from the Gila River to Sonoran Mexico, from which country there is little to distinguish it physically. This desert region, known to the Spaniards as Pimería Alta (that is, the upper country of the Pima Indians), was the only portion of what was afterwards called Arizona to possess a white population until several years after our Mexican War. The tourist to-day penetrates it in two general ways. Near the Mexican frontier the Southern Pacific transcontinental line traverses it, passing through Yuma and Tucson and reaching up to Phoenix by a branch from Maricopa. From the north a branch of the Santa Fe system runs southward from Ash Fork through Prescott directly to Phoenix.