Had I been his own familiar friend Fray Ignacio could not have welcomed me more warmly or treated me more kindly.

A European with news but little above a year old was a perfect godsend to him.

When he heard that I had served in his native land and the Bourbons once more ruled in France and Spain, he went into ecstasies of delight, took me into his house, and gave me of his best.
San Andrea was well named Valle Hermoso.

It was like an alpine village set in a tropical garden.

The mud houses were overgrown with greenery, the rocks mantled with flowers, the nearer heights crested with noble trees, whose great white trunks, as smooth and round as the marble pillars of an eastern palace, were roofed with domes of purple leaves.
Through the valley and between verdant banks and blooming orchards meandered a silvery brook, either an affluent or a source of one of the mighty streams which find their homes in the great Atlantic.
The mission was a village of tame Indians, whose ancestors had been "Christianized," by Fray Ignacio's Jesuit predecessor.