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25. The Rigorous Climate
- University of New Mexico Press
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• 49 The climate is given to extremes. Winter is most rigorous, with many snows, much ice, and cold spells that cause all the rivers, salt marshes, and even the Río del Norte to freeze. These waters are frozen so hard that loaded carts can pass over them, as well as great mobs of livestock running at top speed. It’s just as though the surface were hard earth. It is with very great effort that we friars cross these rivers to minister to our pueblos. As the rivers stay frozen solid, their surfaces resemble slick, mirrorlike crystal, which on foot or on horseback lends itself to very hard falls. The remedy to this is to throw dirt on the surface of the ice so that your feet will stick to it and be steadied. But we can’t find any, because everything is so frozen. It is so cold that, to dig out a grave in the church, you must first build a fire on top of the ground to thaw it. You cannot chip it even with iron bars. It is enough to mention that as we are saying mass, we have two braziers going on each side of the chalice. Even with that and the warmth of many people in the church, the wine freezes on us. And so it is that every winter many Indians freeze out in the countryside. Many Spaniards freeze their ears, feet, and hands. On the other side of the coin, summer is more intolerable in its heat than winter is in its cold. And so it seems that, in some of these provinces more than others, there is sometimes nothing to be cheerful about. 25. TheRigorousClimate ...