Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/265

 Rh One thing strikes us in all this walk over the city—the multiplicity of ruins. It is as full of ruins as Rome or Jerusalem. Great dust-heaps of vanished populations are on the northern borders. Cleft walls high and thick are all through the main thoroughfares. This is a feature of Mexico which did not exist twenty years ago. Then there were no ruins, except those of liberty and religion.



The fall of the Church as a political governing power cut open the streets and laid low the convents. Comonfort initiated this work. The American war had left the Bible and the light of Protestant Christianity to leaven the hard lump of antique superstition. It showed its leavening influence first in the opening of streets. At that time a large number of monasteries existed in the city. They covered from five to twenty acres. Of course they crossed the main thoroughfares everywhere, and interfered badly with the city's progress. They possessed gardens, parks, deep arcades around marble-pillared patios, dormitories, libraries, chapels, and magnificent churches. Their very halls of flagellation were richly bedight.

The convents St. Augustine, St. Dominic, and many others, were first emptied of their occupants. Friars and nuns were objects of ridicule. And then, if new streets were needed, the buildings were cut in twain. The chief of these was the Convent of San Francisco. It was the oldest and richest. None covered so large a space, or was so variedly and richly endowed. It was founded by a natural