Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII TUCSON THAT school child reading of the Pilgrims' land- V V ing, of Montcalm's Defeat, and the Revolutionary War, but thinks he is learning the whole of America's colonial history? Studying from text-books eastern professors wrote about the time when the Mississippi held back the lurking savage, he skips over the brief mention of Coronado and Cortez as of sporadic explorers who kindly lessened home work by changing the map as little as possible. He reads of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and Faneuil Hall in Boston, and the Old South Church. Yet in the land of Coronado, the uncharted wilderness his mind pictures, rise the white turrets and dome of a Mission beside which the Old South is as ordinary as a country Audrey compared with a lady of St. James' court. Who of his elders can blame him, who pride themselves on their familiarity with the cloisters of San Marcos and Bruges, Chartres and the ruined giant Rheims, and have heard vaguely or not at all, of the pearl set by devout Spaniards against the blue enamel sky of Arizona and dedicated to San Xavier? As it lies relaxed on the tinted desert carpet, dome and tower so light that they seem great white balloons, kept from floating away into the vivid sky by substantial anchors of buttress and arch, compare it with the neat smugness of our Bulfinch and Georgian meeting-houses in New England. Even at its best, the latter style hasthe prim daintiness of an exquisite maiden lady, while the Mission is like the Sleeping Beauty, with white arm curved above her head, relaxed and dreaming. Without claiming to speak with authority, I consider San Xavier the loveliest ecclesiastical building in America. Certainly its obscurity should be broken more frequently than now by pilgrimages, its outlines as familiar in schoo...