Unlike other Missions built of adobe, San Xavier is of stone and brick. It is 100 by thirty feet. The transept on each side of the nave runs out twenty-one feet square. The roof above the nave is supported by groined arches from door to altar. The cupola above the altar is fifty feet to the dome. The other vaults are only thirty feet high. The windows are high in the clearstory and set so deeply in the casement that the light falling on the mural paintings and fresco work is sifted and softened. Practically all the walls, cupola, dome, transept, nave, are covered with mural paintings. There is the coming of the Spirit to the Disciples. There is the Last Supper. There is the Conception. There is the Rosary. There is the Hidden Life of the Lord. The main altar has evidently been constructed by the Jesuits; for the statue of St. Francis Xavier stands below the Virgin between figures of St. Peter and St. Paul and God, the Creator. On the groined arches of the dome are figures of the Wise Men, the Flight to Egypt, the Shepherds, the Annunciation. Gilded arabesques colored in Moorish shell tints adorn the main altar. Statues of the saints stand in the alcoves and niches of the pillars and vaults. Two small doors lead up to the towers from the main door. Look well at these doors and stairways. Not a nail has been driven. The doors are mortised of solid pieces. The first flight of stairs leads to the choir. Around the choir are more mural paintings. Two more twists of the winding stair; and you are in the belfry. Twenty-two more steps bring you to the summit of the tower--a galleried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground, where you may look out on the whole world. Pause for a moment, and look out. The mountains shimmer in their pink mists. The sunlight sleeps against the adobe walls of the scattered Indian house. You can hear the drone of the children from the schoolrooms behind the Mission. You can see the mortuary chapel down to the right and the lions supporting the arches of the Mission roof. Father Kino was a famous European scholar and gentleman. He threw aside scholarship. He threw aside comfort. He threw aside fame; and he came to found a Mission amid arabs of the American Desert. The hands that wrought these paintings on the walls were not the hands of bunglers. They were the hands of artists, who wrought in love and devotion. Three times, San Xavier was dyed in martyr blood by Indian revolt.