Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/509

Rh to stone upon the great towers. There is a miracle in this, for the priests say so; and hence they gave the city the name of Puebla de los Angeles or City of the Angels, which it bears to this day.

The cathedral is mainly built of dark brown stone, covers a great area, and is being enclosed with an excellent iron fence, every post surmounted by an angel, and its face ornamented with a cast of some saint of the past. The façade of the northern entrance is embellished with statues and medallions in marble, and the mitre and keys of the Pope. In the north face of the western tower is a clock. The main entrance is in the western front, and here are more statues in various niches, sculptured saints and cherubim, and the date of erection of the cathedral,—1664. The bronze casts that face the stone posts, and the angels that cap them, were produced at the foundery of one Marshall, an American, who had been here forty years or more.

If you wish to climb into the towers, you must enter a narrow doorway, and ascend a circular stone stairway for some distance, when you are stopped by a porter, who demands a real, and, this paid, he rings a bell for another man to let you in. Both men, with their families, live in the tower. There are two bell-towers, one above the other, containing the great bell, stamped 1729, and eighteen others, of various dates up to 1828. An inscription here states that the towers were erected in 1678, in the reign of Carlos II., at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars.

The top of the cathedral commands the entire Puebla valley, with its broad green fields and swelling hills; domes and towers rise everywhere, and glisten from every hill-top, many of them being covered with glazed tiles that reflect the sun. Arid plains alternate with verdant fields. Outside the city walls there are not many houses visible, except they are collected in pueblos or villages, and the haciendas are few, the farm buildings being concentrated in one spot, and surrounded by high walls. Though the view on every side is charming, with billowy plains running south and east, and the great mountain, Malinche, rises in the