Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/219

Rh Here we turn off the dusty highway and climb a smooth, open, steep hill. The water rattles gayly down a brisk stream, which a mile or two back we had turned aside into a pasture path to enjoy. The smooth upland soon becomes rougher and more wooded, and after a mile or more we enter a cleft in a smooth-faced wall of a venerable look, and are in the grounds of the Convent of El Desierto.

The woods grow thicker in numbers and in size. No needy knife-cutter has been allowed to ply his trade in this sacred inclosure. For two hundred and sixty-nine years they have been let alone. Only the path, of a single horseback width, has been cut through them. This path winds along the sides of lofty hills and deep ravines, densely shaded, now climbing, now declining, for a mile and a half; then, winding up a steep acclivity, it emerges upon the open space on which the convent stands.

One notices in this location the same taste that governed the abbots of England and Europe. They always chose the most beautiful spots for their retreats. They had an eye to the beauty of nature, all the keener, perhaps, because they were forbidden to look upon all other beauty. They knew how to make a wilderness blossom like the rose, but they selected the wilderness most susceptible of such blossoming. This rare combination is one of the best. Few ever equaled; none, we believe, surpassed it. Their whole area was nine leagues square—three miles in each direction; and all encompassed with a choice brick wall, that still survives in large part and perfect form.

The clearing is narrow, woods hugging the buildings closely on either side, removed not a hundred feet in the rear, but opening on the front to the breadth of a single pasture lot, a slope of five or ten acres.

Was ever solitude more solitary? In this bright, warm morning not a creature is stirring except the visitors and visited. Not a bird or insect, or man or beast. In fact, I only saw one insect in all the woods and walks, and that was a wasp, that had fallen on the ground, and fluttered and fainted from sheer loneliness. The