One of the most famous haciendas, in the state of Jalisco, is Ciénega de Mata, legalized by the Crown in 1697. Owned by the Rincón Gallardo family, it was a tract of eighty-seven estancias (ranches). According to Alfonso Rincón Gallardo, reminiscing about his father's estate, the residence was built during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It is a two-story building with twenty rooms and spans or arches across the front. The church is gray limestone, like the residence, with a baroque façade. An elaborate coat-of-arms embellishes the entry. Sculptured pink stone _cantera_ saints and angels fill various niches. The octagonal dome and tower are richly carved. [Illustration: Hacienda de Ciénega de Mata, Jalisco: 16th-century church.] Gallardo appreciated the life at Ciénega, the brandings, the roundups, sheep pasturing, shearings, and weanings. "I liked to ride with the cowboys," he wrote, "those extraordinary horsemen, pleasant companions, tanned by sun and wind, simple in tastes, frank, never tiring--the classic men of the great haciendas." Recalling his life he tells us: Every morning after breakfast, all of us--my father dressed in his charro outfit; my mother attired English style--would set out on horseback, riding about the hacienda's vast fields of corn and barley. After the midday meal, back at the house, we walked about the stables, the granaries, and over a small hill that lay nearby; and sometimes we played fronton or went out riding again. At night, after supper, we read or played games. In this tranquil, pleasant manner, life went on, broken only by the annual festival, an event celebrated on a grand scale with parades, banquets, horse races, cockfights, boxing matches, and, in the evening, a fantastic display of fireworks. [Illustration: Hacienda cattle brand] Brantz Mayer, secretary of the United States Legation in Mexico during 1841 and 1842, enjoyed a horseback visit to the Hacienda de San Nicolás, near Tetécala, in the state of Mexico. He admired the white buildings and the neatness of the estate: "The sugarcane fields were in capital order, the roads smooth, the fences maintained; cattle were under the care of herdsmen." [Illustration: Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: chapel Virgin; her elaborate wardrobe valued at $50,000.] The _mayordomo_ was hospitable and accommodated Mayer and his party with comfortable rooms. Following dinner, Mayer walked among the hacienda's fields of sugarcane. He inspected the _tienda de raya_ (the general store), and the hacienda's offices, kitchens, parlors, bedrooms, and an "immense corridor of arches filled with caged birds, hung with hammocks, where the family pass most of the long warm days of summer." [Illustration: Hacienda de Cabezón, Jalisco: capital, front of residence. 1800: building designed by architect Eduardo Tresguerras.]