When I got back to the Hotel, a man walked into the patio, with a bunch of flowers. It was a bunch that could hardly get in at the door, and the flowers were of every color and variety. There were exclamations of admiration from the people sitting around, as from me also, and then I was told it was for me, the sender was Don Adolfo de la Huerta. It was so big and so beautiful, I laid it on a table in the middle of my sitting room, and felt that I was at my own funeral, but at least enjoying it. A Mexican bunch is a wonderful thing, a great work of art. The flowers are wired and tied. Some on long sticks according to the design--It produces a wonderful effect, but they cannot be kept alive unless the whole construction is picked to pieces, and then oftentimes it is discovered the stems are too short to put in water. My flowers were roses, dahlias, choisias, magnolia, tuberose and violets, the two latter rescued and put in water. Then I sat down and wrote to de la Huerta, and told him exactly what I thought of him, straight from my heart. SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1921. _Mexico City._ I was lent a car, which called at the Hotel at 6:00 A.M. We did not start till seven, and it was cold, ever so cold, but the road was beautiful. I repeated the expedition to El Desirto and having started early got there before the rains. El Desirto is the ruin of a Carmelite Convent. It is a huge rambling place “in the desert” quite isolated on the mountainside amid the woods. It is very beautiful, but I thought dismal and damp. A Mexican man and boy, armed us with candles, led us down through underground passages and cells that were very extensive and dripping from the vaulted roofs ... Dick loved it, but I was glad to be back in the sunlight. It must be a curious sensation to be a nun or a monk, to live secluded from the world, in peace and calm, and to have no further anxiety (unless it be about one’s soul--) and to be content with the daily round, the menial work. I suppose it requires great belief and no imagination. We came back down the mountain, stopping to pick wild flowers, and at a village we found a house that gave us hot milk, for which we were thankful. Then we pursued our way along a road whence came the endless procession of men, women and boys, carrying their abnormal loads into town for sale. It led us through a valley some miles further in among the hills, and we paused on a hillside in the sun, to eat our combined breakfast and lunch. From our selected spot we viewed about a mile of road, and it made a curious impression upon one (as de la Huerta would have wished). This never ceasing steady stream of human beasts of burden! It suggested the evacuation of a town by refugees, carrying all they could take away.