Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/377

 dark, with every member of our party in good condition,—save where he had come in contact with a donkey.

Crossing the valley eastward, we find at about the same distance from the city as Chapultepec, two miles, the church and chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe. A tramway leads out to it, over a causeway that is said to have existed when Cortés invaded the valley. At the foot of the hill of Tepeyacac is the sumptuous church built in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with a small village clustered about it, and a series of stone steps leading up to the chapel on the hill. Here, in the year 1531, if we may believe Mexican tradition, the most holy Virgin appeared to a poor Indian, Juan Diego by name, as he was on his way to early mass. After commanding him to direct the Bishop of Mexico (who was the noted Zumárraga) to build here a chapel in her honor, she filled his blanket with flowers, and disappeared. The wondering Indian did as directed, but when he cast at the Bishop's feet his burden of flowers, as they fell away from the blanket there was revealed an image of the Virgin herself! Reverently and with joy and wonder, the Bishop took the tilma, or blanket, and hung it up in his oratory; and two years later it was hung above the high altar in the church built in commemoration of this event. The church was finished in 1533, and later the chapel, perched on the hill above, was built. These are not the only attractions to the shrine, for a celebrated chalybeate spring gushes forth from the base of the hill, which was caused by the pressure of the Virgin's foot in emphasis of her command to Juan Diego. On the side of the hill, half-way to the chapel, is a monument in stone and mortar to one man's devotion, in the shape of the mast and sails of a ship. Caught at sea in a storm, a sailor vowed he would build a stone ship to the glory of the Virgin, if allowed to escape to land. Once safe ashore, either his funds or his piety failed him, since he got no farther than the foremast. And there it stands to-day, the only stone effigy in existence perhaps, of a ship, or part of one, of so large a size.

In the cemetery, near the chapel, are buried Santa Anna and several other noted Mexican worthies. A fine view of the city