DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
they slaughtered a sheep, chose their best hides to carpet his dwelling. Moreover, he exacted a heavy tribute in labour. He was never done with having earth carried up from the plain in baskets. He enlarged the churchyard and made the deep garden in the cloister, enriching it with dung from the corrals. Here he was able to grow a wonderful garden, since it was watered every evening by women,—and this despite the fact that it was not proper that a woman should ever enter the cloister at all. Each woman owed the Padre so many ollas of water a week from the cisterns, and they murmured not only because of the labour, but because of the drain on their water-supply.
Baltazar was not a lazy man, and in his first years there, before he became stout, he made long journeys in behalf of his mission and his garden. He went as far as Oraibi, many days’ journey, to select their best peach seeds. (The peach orchards of Oraibi were very old, having been cultivated since the days of the earliest Spanish expeditions, when Coronado’s captains gave the Moquis peach seeds brought from Spain.) His grape cuttings were brought from Sonora in baskets on muleback, and he would go all the way to the Villa (Santa Fé) for choice garden seeds, at the season when pack trains came up the Rio Grande valley. The early churchmen did a great business in carrying seeds about, though the Indians and
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