Excerpt from The Catholic World, Vol. 54: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science; October, 1891, to March, 1892

Outside the city are a succession of quarries. Here is reaped the most abundant crop of the district; for the ribs of these mountains are formed of a dark, durable stone somewhat like blue basalt, of which the city and its beautiful palaces, temples, and mansions are constructed, and we see venturesome quarry men, like Shetland bird-catchers or animated plummets, dangling at dizzy heights from the extremities of slender cords, and patiently with their crowbars detaching huge masses of rock from the flanks of the cliffs. Hereabouts is the Fort of Loreto, so called because it encloses the church, which a devout Indian of the last age erected in memory of his deliverance whilst belated on this spot in a terrific hurricane. Though this stronghold is recent, it has no value for defensive purposes; but a few soldiers still occupy the place. The church is in decay, as is also the penitential cobblestone road, over which pilgrims from the city used to reach the shrine, passing beneath a fine archway with representation of the Holy House of Loreto, surmounted by a figure of St. Michael, now all crumbling away. Half a mile off, and at a higher elevation, is the Fort of Guadalupe, which, like the others, has been constructed around an ancient pilgrimage church, or rather around its site, for the walls were employed to strengthen the earthworks hastily thrown up to defend the posi tion, and little now remains to indicate its former position but the crypt, once used as a powder magazine; the chaplain's house, now occupied by a veteran of the war; and a ruined cloister. Where lie a couple of dismounted cannon half a century old. The custodian conducted us from point to point of the fortress,7 [oct.

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