Life seems to sleep at San Xavier. The mountains hemming in the valley seem to sleep. The shimmering blue valley sleeps. The sunlight sleeps against the glare white walls. The huge old mortised door to the church stands open, all silent and asleep. The door of the Mission parlor stands open--sunlight asleep on a checkered floor. You enter. Your footsteps have an echo of startling impudence--modern life jumping back into past centuries! You ring the gong. The sound stabs the sleeping silence, and you almost expect to see ghosts of Franciscan friar and Jesuit priest come walking along the arcaded pavement of the inner courtyard to ask you what all this modern noise is about; but no ghosts come. In fact, no one comes. San Xavier is all asleep. You cross through the parlor to the inner patio or courtyard, arched all around three sides with the fourth side looking through a wonderfully high arched gateway out to the far mountains. Polly turns on her perch in her cage, and goes back to sleep. The white Persian kitten frisks his white-plumed tail; and also turns over and goes to sleep. Two collie dogs don't even emit a "woof." They arch their pointed noses with the fine old aristocratic air of the unspoken question: what are you of the Twenty Century doing wandering back into the mystery and mysticism and quietude of the religious sixteen hundred? But if you keep on going, you will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the little Pimas and Papagoes in the schoolrooms. San Xavier, architecturally, is sheer delight to the eye. The style is almost pure Moorish. The yard walls are arched in harmony with the arched outline of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will notice the Spanish lion at the intersection of all the roof arches. In front of the Mission buildings is a walled space of some sixty by forty feet, where the Indians used to assemble for discussion of secular matters before worship. On the front wall in high relief are placed the arms of St. Francis of Assisi, and in the sacristry to the right of the altar you will find mural drawings and a painting of Saint Ignatius. Thus San Xavier claims as her founders and patrons both Franciscan and Jesuit. This is easily explained. The Franciscans came up overland across the Desert from the City of Mexico. The Jesuits came up inland from their Mission on the Gulf of California. Father Kino, the Jesuit, from a Bavarian university, was the first missionary to hold services among the Pimas and Papagoes, and if he did not lay the foundations of San Xavier, then they were laid by his immediate successors. The escutcheon of the Franciscans on the wall is a twisted cord and a cross on which are nailed the arms of the Christ and the arm of St. Francis. The Christ arm is bare. The Franciscan's arm is covered.