Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/361

Rh padres were wonderful bell-makers. With the very rudest appliances, and only charcoal for fuel, they managed to cast here in Mexico, three centuries and more ago, better, and sweeter-toned bells, than we in the United States or Europe are able to produce to-day, with "all the modern improvements" and unlimited means at our command.

At last, after infinite toil and jostling and pushing through the ragged and swarthy crowd, we reached the church door, and entered it. The whole worn and worm-eaten floor of the great edifice was covered with kneeling Indians, all devoutly repeating prayers, and many carrying lighted wax-candles in their hands. Quietly as was possible we worked our way through the crowd, and reached a central point upon the floor. The air was filled with the incense burning in golden censers around the great altar, and yellow with the dust which the ever-coming and going throng raised in clouds from their soiled garments and the dirty floor.

The wealth once held within these four walls was almost fabulous, and even now when silver and gold in many places have been replaced by baser metal, heavily gilded, it is still enormous. The choir and surroundings of the great organ are all of precious metal, and the gallery, leading down from the choir through the center of the church to the great altar on the north, has on either side a massive railing or balustrade of solid silver, sufficient in aggregate weight to load a first-class railroad car, at least. The altar is surrounded by burnished metal on every side, and all the altar ornaments, which are almost numberless, huge, and massive, are of solid gold and silver.

Wrapt devotion was on every face, but the intense