- Ans. Not one, nor are people making any of the needed repairs.
10. Are the existing houses going to ruins?
- Ans. Almost all, owing to the frequency with which the streets are flooded.
11. How many priests in orders are there?
- Ans. Only two young men in the city: one is a secular curate, the other an ecclesiastic of Catamarca.
There are four others in the province. 12. Are there any fortunes of fifty thousand dollars? and how many of twenty thousand?
- Ans. None; all the people are extremely poor.
13. Has the population increased or diminished?
- Ans. It has diminished by more than one half.
14. Is there any feeling of terror prevalent among the people?
- Ans. A very strong one; there is a fear of uttering even harmless words.
15. Is the money coined of full value?
- Ans. That of the province is debased.
These facts speak with all their sad and fearful severity. The only example of so rapid a decline towards barbarism is presented by the history of the Mohammedan conquests of Greece. And this happens in America, and in the nineteenth century, and is the work of but twenty years!
What is true of La Rioja is equally so of Santa Fé, San Luis, and Santiago del Estero, which have become skeletons of cities, decrepit and devastated, mere apologies for towns. In San Luis there has been but one priest for ten years past, and for the same period it has contained no school, nor any person who wears a dress-
