"The most splendid edifice in Chihuahua is the principal church, which is said to equal in architectural grandeur anything of the sort in the republic. ...This church was built about a century ago, by contributions levied upon the mines (particularly those of Santa Eulalia, fifteen or twenty miles from the city), which paid over a percentage on all the metal extracted therefrom... In this way, about a million of dollars was raised and expended in some thirty years, the time employed in the construction of the building. It is a curious fact, however, that, notwithstanding the enormous sums of money expended in outward embellishments, there is not a church from thence southward, perhaps, where the interior arrangements bear such striking marks of poverty and neglect. ...the turrets are well provided with bells, a fact of which every person who visits Chihuahua very soon obtains auricular demonstration. One, in particular, is so large and sonorous that it has frequently been heard, so I am informed, at the distance of twenty-five miles."
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Commerce_of_the_Prairies
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Commerce of the Prairies
1806 – 1850
Commerce of the Prairies: or, The journal of a Santa Fé trader, 1831–1839 was written by Josiah Gregg (1806–1850), a merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author who described his travels and adventures throughout the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. He is most famous for this book, a classic description of his early travels along the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, then along El Camino Real to Chihuahua, Mexico and further south.
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