Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/364

356 took refuge with a few followers, and on a hill in its suburbs he was put to death. The place is also noted for the treaty of peace which was concluded here between Mexico and the United States in 1848.

At Lagos the Mexican Central branches off to the west, to San Blas.

Halfway to the Pacific coast is the quaint old city of Guadalajara, in the State of Jalisco. The bare brown hills by which it is surrounded would look dreary enough but for the gold of the sunlight and the blue of the sky, nowhere brighter than in Mexico. The city is two miles square and is laid out with straight wide streets crossing at right angles, with narrow sidewalks and one-story flat-roofed houses built about a large courtyard. It is a city of churches. The sky-line is everywhere broken by domes and spires with minarets and round towers built by men who learned architecture from the Moors. It has a beautiful alameda and many fine old trees, with arcades surrounding the public square in the centre of the city. Dominating all is the great cathedral with its decorations of blue and gold and a spire two hundred feet high; this building was very much injured by the great earthquake in the early part of this century. Among so many demolished churches and churches at auction and churches given away, it is remarkable that Guadalajara is building a new one which when completed will be very magnificent. To preserve the building from earthquakes a huge cross has been erected within the walls.

Guadalajara boasts sixteen public squares and many fine public buildings, the State university, the mint, the palaces of the governor and the archbishop and the largest theatre in America. Nor is it behind in modern