“Very beautiful,” he soliloquized. “She was amongst the first; there are five hundred buried in this very court, Señor,” said the Padre rapidly, turning towards me, and crossing himself. “Five thousand in four months! in four short months!” The expression of the old man’s face, as the memory of those four months came back upon him, showed how terrible and ineffaceable were the scenes which they had witnessed. “She was very beautiful!” and the Padre placed the skull gently in the earth again, laid the delicate bones carefully around it, and with his naked hand scraped the loose earth above them. The interior of the Eglesia del Recoleccion, which has a most elaborate façade, covered with shields on which are exhibited all the prominent devices of the church, was dark and gloomy. The altar was a fine one, and the Padre kept a lamp burning constantly before an image of the Virgin, which looked spectral enough beneath its feeble rays. A number of pictures were suspended upon the walls, among which were a variety of saints frying complacently upon gridirons, smiling from stakes of impalement, or sailing smoothly away amongst a swarm of baby angels and bodiless cherubs, to a most substantial looking heaven, elevated only a few yards above the earth. We ascended into the tower by a series of rickety stairs, with gaps here and there ranging from one to four steps, up which the prudent Padre did not essay to go. From this tower we obtained a fine view, second only to that to be had from the top of the Cathedral. As we descended, a huge owl, which we had startled from his roost in some dark corner of the tower, nearly knocked us over in his flight. We returned through the Golgotha, to the grand reception or clock room, where the Padre showed us his plan for restoring the convent, in red and black ink, which required only a single thing to its realization, and that was precisely what the Padre did not know how to obtain, viz., money! We nevertheless made him happy before leaving, by promising to write to the United States, on his behalf, to obtain a grand clock for his church, which should exhibit three dials, and strike the hours. “Con tres frentes!” repeated the Padre, calling after us as we passed down the street, “with three dials!”