The Forrest City times., 1910-08-19

TR YER the thought of Fl Desierto conjures vision of lofty forest HN isles and mysterious depths 4A where old Entertainment plies
 her shuttle of lost days and dreams Where monks of old wan jered in peaceful meditation today the wild deer brouses and the prowlers of dim forests glide The barefooted Carmelites are gone, and the gray convent on the mountain. with it's no ble domes, and towers and cloisters. and arched corridors is silent and pathetic, with that peculiar pathos that broods over solitude where man has once ruled
 Nature has been busy here. as is her won't, recovering the conquest of man but those monks of old built so nobly that their work still resists effacement and sees to dominate the wilderness. Beauty envelopes like garment the grass grown eloisters and erumbling walls and domes of faded color: and tho breeze that rustles the tall heavv- headed grass and clinging vines seems 10 bring down the river of Time, from that island of long ago. odor of incense, tones of long silent bells. prisons and chants
 Such is Fl Desierto today; and one cannot do better than to quote. as others have the old chronicler Thomas Gage, an English Dominican monk who was smuggled into Mexico He wrote about 260 years ago. Tt Is the pleasantest place" he says, "of any about Mexico called by some La Sole dad and by other Fl Desierto, the soil. tary or desert place or wilderness. Were all wildernesses like 1t, to live in wilderness would be better than to live in a city
 This hath been device of poor Flyers, named discalced or barefooted Carmelites, who to make show of their hypocritical and apparent godli- ness. and whilest they would be thought to live like Eremites, retired from the world, they may draw the world to them: they have built there stately cloister. which being upon a hill and among rocks makes 1t to be more admired
 About the cloister they have fash toned out many holes and caves in, under and among the rocks. like Ere mite lodgings, with a room to lie in. an oratory to pray in, with pictures and images. and rare devices for modification as disciplnes of war, rods of iron, haircloth girdles with sharp wyar points to girdle about their bare flesh. and many such toys, which hang about their oratories to make people admire their mortified and holy lives
 "An these Eremitical holes and caves (which are ten In number1 are within the bounds and compass of the cloister and among orchards and gar dens of fruit and flowers, which may take up two miles in compass; and here among the rocks are many springs of water. which. with the shade of plantins and other trees, are most cool and pleasant to the Ere mites; they have also the sweet smell of rose and jazmin, which is a little flower. but the sweetest of all others: there is not any flower to be found that Is rare and exquisite in that coun- try which Is not in that wilderness to delight the senses of these mortified Eramites"
 Racial bias and rivalry of order. though not saintly attributes. might find entrance and be harbored m awares in the soul of even a good monk And since We remember that Father Gage was English and Domini- can. may we not justly soften his Caustic presentation of his "Eremites" while we thank him for his chronicle? :?
 To see Fl Desierto as we saw it. you must first get lost, On the smooth white road up over the rolling hills from the desolate little puebla of Santa Fe our horses loped briskly in the early morning This old white rib bon of road is an automobile thor oughfare, in these twentieth-century days. from the City of Mexico over the mountains 10 the Valley of Toluca. where nestles the city that is the cap ital of the State of Mexico But On this fair day no twentieth-century de vices of people came to strike the 1 discordant note. We met only the de scendants of many generations of those who had walked that way. Men. barefooted or shod in that peculiar sandal called guarache. wearing grace 1 fully their gay serapes or red blaa- kets. and the picturesque broad hrimmed. highpeaked sombreros. walked beside their burros that were packed with towering loads of coarse pottery CT baskets. Women. also