¡O Man!
Behold the end of our troubles—
Death, Earth, Nothing.
In this urn repose the remains of Dña Loretta Lara,
A charitable woman, faithful wife, and tender mother,
prudent and virtuous.
¡Mortals!
To the Lord let us direct our prayers for her.
She died
The 29th of November, in the year 1830, aged 44.
One of the altars was decorated with human skulls and cross-bones, and in the rear of the church was a great charnel-house. It was enclosed by a high stone wall, and was filled with a collection of skulls and bones, which, after the flesh had decayed, had been dug up from the graves in the cemetery of the church.
The convent is connected with the church by a spacious corridor. It is a gigantic structure, built entirely of stone, with massive walls, and four hundred feet in length. The entrance is under a noble portico, with high stone pillars, from which ascends a broad stone staircase to a spacious corridor twenty feet wide. This corridor runs through the whole length of the building, with a stone pavement, and is lighted in two places by a dome. On each side are cloisters, once occupied by a numerous body of Franciscan friars. The first two and principal of these cloisters on the left are occupied by the cura, and were our home. Another is occupied by one of his ministros, and in the fourth was an old Indian making cigars. The rest on this side are unoccupied, and on the right, facing the great garden of the convent, all the cloisters are untenanted, dismantled, and desolate; the doors and windows are broken, and grass and weeds are growing out of the floors. The garden had once been in harmony with the grandeur and style of the convent, and now shares its fortunes. Its wells and fountains, parterres and beds of flowers, are all there, but neglected and running to waste, weeds, oranges, and lemons growing wildly together, and our horses were turned into it loose, as into a pasture.
Associated in my mind with this ruined convent, so as almost to form part of the building, is our host, the pride and love of the village, the cura Carillo. He was past forty, tall and thin, with an open, animated, and intelligent countenance, manly, and at the same time mild, and belonged to the once powerful order of Franciscan friars, now reduced in this region to himself and a few companions. After the destruction of the convent at Merida, and the scattering of the friars, his friends procured for him the necessary papers to enable him to secularize, but he would not abandon the brotherhood in its waning fortunes, and still wore the long blue gown, the cord, and cross of the Franciscan monks. By the regulations of his order, all the receipts of his curacy belonged to the brotherhood, deducting only forty dollars per month for himself. With this pittance, he could live and extend hospitality to strangers. His friends urged him to secularize, engaging to procure for him a better curacy, but he steadily refused; he never expected to be rich, and did not wish to be; he had enough for his wants, and did not desire more. He was content with his village and with the people; he was the friend of everybody, and everybody was his friend; in short, for a man not indolent, but, on the contrary, unusually active both in mind and body, he was, without affectation or parade, more entirely contented with his lot than any man I ever knew. The quiet and seclusion of his village did not afford sufficient employment for his active mind, but, fortunately for science and for me, and strangely enough as it was considered, he had turned his attention to the antiquities of the country. He could neither go far from home, nor be absent long, but he had visited every place within his reach, and was literally an enthusiast in the pursuit. His friends smiled at this folly, but, in consideration of his many good qualities, excused it. There was no man in the country whom we were so well pleased to meet, and as it was a rare thing for him to associate with persons who took the slightest interest in his hobby, he mourned that he could not throw up all his business and accompany us in our exploration of the ruins.
It is worthy of remark, that even to a man so alive to all subjects of antiquarian interest, the history of the building of this convent is entirely unknown. In the pavement of the great corridor, in the galleries, walls, and roof, both of the church and convent, are stones from ancient buildings, and no doubt both were constructed with materials furnished by the ruined edifices of another race, but when, or how, or under what circumstances, is unknown. On the roof the cura had discovered, in a situation which would hardly have attracted any eyes but his own, a square stone, having roughly engraved on it this inscription: