dollars, but save fifty dollars per month on the charcoal bill, and are considered a good investment. Soup, meat, and beans are cooked here for sixteen hundred persons at once, and they are now erecting an enormous kitchen in which the entire cooking for the State-Prison, containing from seven hundred to one thousand prisoners, is to be done. It now costs the State five cents per day, to board the State prisoners, and the Sisters expect to do it better, and make a profit on that figure, for the benefit of the Hospicio.
The Chapel is really a grand Church, magnificently decorated with paintings, with a great dome, beautifully frescoed. The founder gave forty blocks of buildings in Guadalajara, all under rent, as an endowment for this establishment; but most of the property is now gone. It costs only sixty thousand dollars per annum to support the Hospicio and Belan Hospital together and their resources being but forty-four thousand dollars, the State and City pay the rest. We spent four hours wandering through this great establishment, and, after partaking of a collation, listened to a brass band of thirty pieces, played by boys instructed in the place, and operatic music by the young ladies, and then left because night had come and we could wait no longer.
The schools of Guadalajara, new as they are—some of them but a year or two established—astonished us more than anything else we saw in this ancient City. The municipality of Guadalajara now supports eighteen primary day schools, nine for girls, and nine for boys, free to all, and five evening schools, beside contributing to the support of several more advanced schools, accommodating in all seven thousand pupils, and all at an
