Glimpses of Three Coasts

the events of the next thirty years, their weeping would have been turned into exultant joy; but not the most daring en

ears previous; and it became at once the common belief that his soul had passed directly into heaven, and that this great wave of conversions was the result of his prayers. Prosperity continued steadily to increase. Mission afte

nta Cruz, Sept. 25, 1791; Soledad, Oct. 9, 1791; San José, June 11, 1797; San Juan Bautista, June 24, 1797; San Migue

mission establishments had grown to an almost incredible degree. In several of them massive stone churches had been built, of an architecture at once so simple and harmonious that, even in ruins, it is to-day the grandest in Am

e grains and cool fruits of the temperate zone flourishing, in the marvellous California air, side by side with the palm, olive, grape, fig, orange, and pomegranate. From the two hundred head of cattle sent by the wise Galvez, had grown herds pas

attaché of the French Legation in Mexico in 1842, gives a clear idea

olrooms, and storerooms. The hospitals are situated in the most quiet parts of the mission, where also the schools are kept. The young Indian girls dwell in halls called monasteries, and are called nuns. Placed under the care of Indian matrons, who are worthy of confidence, they learn to make cloth of wool, cotton, and flax, and do not leave the monastery until they are old enough to be married. The India

ngelus bell called them to mass. After the mass they breakfasted, and then dispersed to their various labors. At eleven they were again summoned together for dinner, after which they rested until two, when they went again to work, and worked until the evening Angelus, just before sunset. After prayers and sup

d best workmen had suits of cloth like the Spaniards. The women recei

rel, tobacco, and trinkets among the Indians, and devoted the surplus to the embellishment of the churches, the purchase of musical instrument

ristian way; sometimes by luring strangers in with gifts; sometimes, it is said, by capturing them by main force; but of this there is only scanty evidence, and it is not probable that it was often practised. It has also been said that cruel and severe methods were used to compel the Indians to work; that they were driven under the lash by their overseers, and goaded with lances by the soldiers. No doubt there were individual instances of cruelty; seeds of it being indigenous in human nature, su

ounded affection and devotion invariably shown toward them by their Indian subjects. They venerat

y hundreds, going to and fro; children in schools; women spinning; bands of young men practising on musical instruments; music, the scores of which, in many instances, they had themselves written out; at evenin

ains, groves of olive trees, broad vineyards, and orchards of all manne

r of the presidents to check the growing disposition toward ease on the part of the friars. At one time several of them were found to be carrying silver watches. The watches were taken away, and sent to Guadalajara to be sold, the money to be paid into the Church treasury. At another time an order was is

here were even set apart fruit orchards called "travellers' orchards." A man might ride from San Diego to Monterey by easy day's journeys, spending each night as guest in a mission establishment. As soon as he rode up, an Indian page would appear to take his horse; another to show him to one of the travellers' rooms. He was served with the best of food and wine as long as he liked

administrators of affairs, have come from strangers who, thus sojourning und

bly unexampled in any other situation.... I have never heard that they have not acted wit

a man not in sympathy with either the religious or the

on the Atlantic shore, the descendants of the Puritans, weighed down by serious purpose, half grudging the time for their one staid yearly Thanksgiving, and driving the Indians farther and farther into the wilderness every year, fighting and killing them; on th

and her husband, having been chosen godfather and godmother to the tower, walked in solemn procession around it, carrying lighted candles in their hands, preceded by the friar, who sprinkled it with holy water and burned incense. In the four long streets of Indians' houses, then running eastward from the mission, booths of green boughs, decorated with flowers, were set up in front of all the doors. Companies of Indians from other missions came as guests, dancing and singing as they approached. Their Indian hosts went out to meet them, also singing,

,-the presidio to be the guard of the mission; later was to come the pueblo,[3] or town. From indefiniteness in the understanding of property rights, and rights of authority, as vested under these three heads, there very soon arose confusion, which led to collisions,-collisions which have not yet ceased, and never wi

e early days the relations between the military and the ecclesiastical representatives of the king were comparatively simple: the soldiers were sent avowedly and specifically to protect the friars; moreover, in those earlier days, soldiers and friars were alike devout, and, no doubt, had the mission interests more equally at heart than they did later. But each year's increase of numbers in the garrisons, and of numbers and power in the missions, increased the possibilities o

rs, and there were many other curious and entangling cross-purpose powers distributed between fria

sible to the president, or guardian, of the Franciscan College in San Fernando, in Mexico. One responsible officer, called procurador, was kept in the city of Mexico to buy supplies for the missions from stipends due, and from the drafts given to the friars by the

y, was made up of estates, mines, manufactories, and flocks,-all gifts of rich Catholics to the Society of Jesus. It yielded an income of fifty thousand dollars a year, the whole of which belonged to the Church, and was to be used in paying stipends to the friars (to the Dominicans in Lower as well as to the Franciscans in Upp

ing whole estates and pocketing their price, farming the fund out for the benefit of the State treasury, and, finally, in Santa Anna's time, selling the whole outright to two banking-houses. During these troublous times the friars not only failed frequently to receive their regular stipends allotted from the interest of this Pious Fund, but their agent was unable to collect the money due them for the su

as the period at the expiration of which the Indian communities attached to the missions were to be formed into pueblos,-the missions to be secularized, that is, turned into curacies, the pueblo being the parish. This was, no doubt, the wise and proper ultimate scheme,-the only one, in fact, which provided either for the entire civilization of the Indian or the successful colonization of th

José. A second class of pueblos, called, in the legal phrase of California's later days, "Presidial Pueblos," had originated in the settle

tly-opposed by the friars. These fomenting causes of disquiet reacted on the impatience and greed in Spain; all together slowly, steadily working against the missions, until, in 1813, the Spanish Cortes passed an act decreeing their secularization. This was set forth in sounding phrase as an act purely for the benefit of the Indians, that they might become citizens of towns. But it

esentatives of each took turns at ruling in California. The waves of every Mexican revolution broke on the California shor

to a tax, per capita, on all their thousands of Indians, to pay the expenses of a deputy to sit in the Mexican Congress. They allowed troops to be quartered in

, as their enemies do, that they would never have advocated it, and were not training the Indians with a view to it: but the first assertion is an assumption, and nothing more; and the refutation of the second lies in the fact that even in that short time they had made the savages into "masons, carpenters, plasterers, soap-makers, tanners, shoe-makers, blacksmiths, millers, bakers, cooks, brick-makers, carters and cart-makers, weavers and spinner

ars President Sarria was under arrest for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Mexican republic. Nevertheless, it not being convenient to remove him and fill his place, he performed all his functions as president of the missions throug

r against the mission interests according to the exigencies of th

hem all that remained to be rescued of the mission properties and converts. All was anarchy and confusion. During the fifty-five years that California was under Spanish rule she had but nine governors. During the twenty-four that she

panish viceroy in the city of Mexico had been killed, and a Mexican made emperor in his place, they forthwith made a great feast, burned up their chief, and elected a new one in his stead. To the stringent reproofs of the horrified friars they made answer:

read, in the political records of the time, such paragraphs as this: "Out of one hundred and sixty Indian families at San Diego, to whom emancipation was offered by Governor Figueroa, only ten could be induced to accept it." The friars were to hand over all records and inventories to stewards or administrators appointed. Boards of magistrates were also appointed for each village. One half of the movable property was to be divided among the "emancipated persons," and to each head of a family was to be given four hundred square yards of land. Everything else-lands, movable properties, property of all classes-was to be put into the ha

ings the Supreme Government might absorb the Pious Fund, under the pretence that it was no longer necessary for missionary purposes, and thus had reverted to the State as

he project was executed,

s, and to elevate the Christianized Indians to the rank of citizens, were after all executed in such a manner that the so-called seculariz

ed, and that a government which is driven, as Mexico was, to recruiting its colonial forces by batches of selected prison convicts, is entitled to pity, if not charity, in our estimates of its

ll this the Indians were the victims. They were, under the administrators, compelled to work far harder than before; they were ill-fed and ill-treated; they were hired out in gangs to work in towns or on farms, under masters who regarded them simply as beasts of burden; their rights to the plots of land which had been set off for them were, almost without exception, ignored. A more pitiable sight has not

ther estimates put the figures for 1834 considerably lower. It is not easy to determine which are true; but the most moderate estimates of all tell the story with sufficient emphasis. There is also verbal testimony on these points still to be heard in California, if one has patience and interest enough in the subject to listen to it. There are still living, wandering about, half b

harge of the splendid mission of San Luis Rey. In 1800, two years after its founding, this mission had 369 Indians. In 1827 it had 2,686; it owned over twenty thousand head of cattle, and nearly twenty thousand sheep. It controlled over two hundred thousand acres of land, and there were raised in its fields in one year three thousand bushels of wheat, six th

ponies in hot haste, and galloped all the way to San Diego, forty-five miles, to bring him back by force. They arrived just as the ship, with Father Peyri on board, was weighing anchor. Standing on the deck, with outstretched arms he blessed them, amid

e the Indians, sleeping on a rawhide on the bare ground, with no drinking-vessel but an ox-horn, and no food but some dried meat hanging in the sun. The little he had he shared with the few Indians who still lingered there. Benevolent persons had offered him asylum; but he refused, saying that he would die at his post. At the San Antonio

th and to him lived on there, growing poorer and poorer each day; he sharing his every morsel of food with them, and starving himself, till, one Sunday morning, saying mass at the crumbling altar, he fainted, fell forward, and died in their arms, of starvation. This was in 1838. On

ant of land without the consent of the friars. This led to a revolution, or rather an ebullition, and Micheltorena was sent out of the country. To him succeeded Pio Pico, who remained in power till the occupation of California by the United States forces in 1846. During the reign of Pio Pico, the ruin of the mission establishments was completed. They were at first sold or rented in batches to the highest bidders. There was first a preliminary farce of proclamation to the Indians to return and take possession of the missions if they did not want them sold. These proclamations were posted up in the pueblos for mon

e much simplified by this act. In the same year the President of Mexico issued an order to Governor Pico to use all means within his power to raise money to defend the country against the United States; and under color of this double authorization the governor forthwith proceeded to sell missions right and left. H

on property null and void. And one of Governor Pico's last acts was, as soon as he had made up his mind to run away out of the country, t

persons holding title to real estate, or in quiet possession of lands under color of right, shall have those titles and rights guaranteed to them." "Color of right" is a legal phrase, embodying a moral idea, an obligation

he confusion existing in regard to the mission properties and lands. Everywhere men turned up with bills of sale from Governor Pico. At the San Diego mission the ostensible owner, one Estu

ut. Finally, General Kearney, to save the trouble of cutting any more Gordian knots, declared that all titles o

s at the time of the United States' possession, was perhaps as near to being equitable as the circumstances would admit. But, considered with reference to the status of the mission establishments under the Spanish rule, to their original extent, the scope of the work, and the magnificent success of their experiment up to the time of the revolutions, it seems a s

sion establishments was held by the Land Commission to be of two sorts,-mission property and church property: the mission property, embracing the great tracts of land formerly cultivated for the community's purpose, it was decided, must be considered as government property; the church property, including, with the church buildings, houses of priests, etc., such smaller portions of land as were devoted to the immediate needs of the ministry, it was decided must still rightfully go to the Church. How many acres of the old gardens, orchards, vineyards, of the missions could properly be claimed by the Church under this head, was of course a question; and it seems to have been decided on very different bases in diff

rracks during the war of 1846, and has been a sheepfold since. Opposite it is an olive orchard, of superb hoary trees s

ng some of the mouldering rooms. The church is a splendid ruin. It was of stone, a hundred and fifty feet long by a hundred in width, with walls five feet thick, a dome eighty feet high, and a fine belfry of arches in whic

perb red, pale green, gray and blue; and the corridors are paved with tiles, large and square. It was our good fortune to have with us, in San Juan Capistrano, a white-haired Mexican, who in his boyhood had spent a year in the mission. He remembered as if it were yesterday its bustling life of fifty years ago, when the arched corridor ran unbroken around the great courtyard, three hundred feet square, and was often filled with Indians, friars, officers, and gay Mexican ladies looking on at a bull-fight in the centre. He remembered the splendid library, filled from ceiling to floor with books, extending one whole side of the square: in a corner, where had been the room in which he used to see sixty Indian women weaving at looms, we stood ankle-deep in furzy weeds and grass. He showed us the doorway, now closed up, which led into the friars' parlor. To this door, every Su

rection. There is also in the office of the justice-or alcalde, as he is still called-of San Juan Capistrano, a carved chair of noticeably bold and graceful desig

nging high on the wall, and three old wooden statues in niches, are the only decorations left. Piles of dirt and rubbish fill the space in front of the altar, and grass and weeds are growing in the corners; great flocks of wild doves live in the roof, and have made the whole place unclean and foul-aired. An old Mexican, eighty years old, a former servant of the mission, has the ruin in charge, and keeps the

altar-rail is a pile of stones, earth, and rubbish, thrown up by seekers after buried treasures; in the farther corner another pile and hole, the home of a badger; mud-swallows' nests are thick on the cornice, and cobwebbed rags of the old canvas ceiling hang fluttering overhead. The only trace of the ancient cultivation is a pear-orchard a few rods off, which must have been a splendid sight in its day; it is at least two hundred yards square, with a double row of trees all around, so placed as to leav

interesting relic. A lost or worn-out silken tassel had been replaced by the patient Indian workers with one of fine-shredded rawhide; the shreds wound with silver wire, and twisted into tiny rosettes and loops, closely imitating the silver device. The church fronts south, on a little green locust walled plaza,-the sleepiest, sunniest, dreamiest place in the world. To the east the land falls off abruptly, so that the paling on that side of the plaza i

at this mission thirteen

to ring when over a thousand Indians flocked at the summons. To-day, at the sound, there comes a procession of little girls and young maidens, the black-robed sisters walki

souls are left in it; its streets are grass-grown; half its houses are empty. But it has a charm of sun, valley, hill, and seaward off-look unsurpassed in all California. Lingering out a peaceful century there are many old men and women, whose memories are like magic glasses, reproducing the pictures of the past. One such we found: a Mexican woman eighty-five years old, portly, jolly, keen-tongued, keen-eyed; the widow of one of the soldiers of the old mission guard. She had had twelve children; she had never been ill a week in her life; she is

is coming before they will make confession. He is like St. Francis's first followers: the obligations of poverty and charity still hold to him the literal fulness of the original bond. He gives away garment after garment, leaving himself without protection against cold; and the brothers are forced to lock up and hide from him all provisions, or he would leave the house bare of food. He often kneels from midnight to dawn on th

first rays flash full on its front, and at evening they linger late on its western wall. It is an inalienable benediction to the place. The longer

whenever a friar dies, to announce that all is over. It is the duty of the brother who has watched the last breath of the dying one t

nnounce a death, there were fifteen o

ll. It seems a not unfitting last word to this slight and fragme

in California and thoroughly knowing its history from first to last, ha

such as to justify the plans of the wise statesman who devised it, and to g

e, assisting at divine worship, and cheerfully performing their easy tasks.... If we ask where are now the thirty thousand Christianized Indians who once enjoyed the beneficence and created the wealth of the twenty-one Catholic missions of California, and then contemplate the most wretched of all want of systems which has surrounded them unde

t at her disposal all the resources of his invaluable library; also to the Superior of the Franciscan Coll

OF THE MISSION INDIANS

of them relating to Indians. A certain fine and chivalrous quality of honor toward the helple

od, and of the American conquest of California, that it becomes possible to understand how the California Mission Indians could ha

, together with their rivers and waters; and the lands which they shall have drained or otherwise improved, whereby they may by their own industry have rendered them fertile, are reserved, in the first place, and can in no case be sol

states shall be granted "in any parts or place where any damage can accrue to the Indians." Every grant of land must be made "without prejudic

s of the royal audiencias, and "always with an eye to the benefit of the Indians;" and "the king's solicitors are to be protectors of the Indians and plead for them." "After distributing to the Indians what they may justly want to cultivate, sow, and raise cattl

is own, all they had to do, or did, was to mark off the portion of land, put the Indian on it and tell him it was his. There would appear to have been little more formality than this in the establishing of the Indian pueblos which were formed in the beginning of the secularization period. Governo

hich they had settled. At any rate, they had nothing which amounted to a protection, or stood in the way of settlers who coveted their lands. It is years since the last trace of the pueblos Las Flores and San Dieguito disappeared; and the San Pasqual valley is entirely taken up by white settlers, chiefly on pre-emption claims. San

by them did not belong to the grantee in any such sense as to entitle him to eject them. The land on which they were living, and the land they were cultivating at the time of the grant, belonged to them as long as they pleased to occupy it. In many of the grants the boundaries of the Indians' reserved portion of the property were

ds at the time of the American possession were held to have any right-not even "color of right"-to them. That they and their ancestors had been cultivating them for three quarters of a century made no difference. Americans wishing to pre-empt claims on any of these so-called government lands did not regard the presence on them of Indian families or communities as any more of a barrier than the presence of so many coyotes or foxes. They would not hesitate to certify to the land office that such lands were "unoccupied." Still less, then, need the purchaser of tracts covered by

, of Los Angeles. It is an admirable paper, clear and exhaustive. Mr. Wilson was an old Californian, had

litical ambition, philanthropy laments the failure of one of the gran

n Diego and Los Angeles counties." They all spoke the Spanish language, and a not inconsiderable number could read and write it. They had built all the houses in the country, had taught the whites how to make brick, mud mortar, how to use asphalt on roofs; they understood irrigation, were good herders, reapers, etc. They were paid only half the wages paid to whites; and being immoderate gamblers, often gambled away on Saturday night and Sunday all they had earned in the week. At that time in

They were picked up by scores, unconscious, carried to jail, locked up, and early Monday morning hired out to the highest bidders at the jail gat

for by the Government, not over five thousand Indians remained to be reported on. Vice and cruelty had reaped large harvests each year. Many of the rich valleys, which at the time of Mr. Wilson's report had been under cultivation by Indians, were now filled by whi

ion. They had cattle, horses, sheep. In 1865 a "special agent" of the United States Government held a grand Indian convention there. Eighteen villages were represented, and the numbers of inhabitants, stock, vineyards, orchards, were reported. The Indians were greatly elated at this evidence of the Government's good intentions toward them. They set up a tall liberty-pole, and

uld establish nothing beyond the letter of the clause as it stood. They earnestly implored the agent to lay the case before the Interior Department. Whether he did or not I do not know, but this is the sequel: On April 15, 1869, an action was brought in the District Court, in San Francisco, by five men, against "Andrew Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, Hor

the Indian families from their houses and drive them out of the valley. The Indians' first impulse was as determined as it could have been if they had been white, to resist the outrage. But on being reasoned with by friends, who sadly and with shame explained to them that by thus resisting, they would simply make it the duty of the sheriff to eject them by force, and, if necessary, shoot down any who opposed the executing of his warrant

standing on the spot, looking at the ruins of the little adobe houses, and the walled graveyard full of graves, and hearing this woman tell how she kept her doors an

es and a half away to the south. It was a dreary, hot little valley, bare, with low, rocky buttes cropping out on either side, and with scanty growths of bushes; there was not a drop of water in it. Here the exiles went to work again; built their huts of reeds and straw; set up a booth of boughs for the priest, when he came, to say mass in; and a rude wooden cros

to give more than a passing look at us. A group of women was at work washing wool in great stone bowls, probably hundreds of years old. The interiors of some of the houses were exquisitely neat and orderly, with touching attempts at adornment,-pretty baskets and shelves hanging on the walls, and over the beds canopies of bright calico. On some of the beds, the sheets and pillow-cases were trimmed with wide hand-wrought lace, made by the Indian women themselves. This is one of their arts which date back to the mission days. Some of the lace is beautiful and fine, and of patterns like the old church laces. It was pitiful to see the poor creatures in almost every one of the hovels brin

f suffering, immovable distrust also underlying the sorrow. It was hard to make them smile. To all our expressions o

ief" or "mourning." It seems to have had a strangely

how much executive orders creating Indian reservations are worth. There have been several such made and revoked in California within their memories. The San Pasqual valley was at one time set apart by executiv

sing, or would be if they did not record such tragedy. It was followed by

and have fruit-trees, buildings, and other valuable improvements to make them contented and comfortable. Until within the past two or three years they raised more fruit than the white settlers of the southern counties. There is belonging to an Indian family there a fig-tree that is the largest in the State, covering a space sixty paces in diameter.... A remonstrance signed by

time, I found only one that had the moral co

protected in their ancient possessions; and the Government

y had the hardihood to say that Indians could not be induced to live on this reservation be

ars the San Pasqual Indians are heard from again. A justice of the peace in the San Pasqual va

to plough up the land. The Los Angeles Land Office has informed the Indians that, not being citizens, they cannot r

gister as a voter, was refused on the ground that, being an Indian, he was not a citizen. In 1850 a small band of Indians living in San Diego County were taxed to the amount of six hundred dollars, which they paid, the sheriff said, "without a murmur." The next year they refused. The sheriff wrote to the district attorney, who replied

them "of the sincere desire of the Government to secure their rights and promote their interests, and of its intention to do whatever might be found practicable in this direction." He told

ly paid the price of the land to the register of the land office of the district, and was daily expecting the patent from Washington. He owned that it was hard to wrest from these well-

work for the farmers who have taken his land. The rest of the Indians are hidden away in the ca?ons and rifts of the near hills,-wherever they can find a bit of ground to keep a horse or two and raise a little grain. They have sought the most inaccessible spots, reached often by miles of difficult trail. They have fled into secret lairs like hunted wild beasts. The Catholic priest of San Diego is much beloved by them. He has been their friend for many years. When he goes to hold service, they gather from their various hiding-places and refuges; sometimes, on a special fête day, over two hundred come. But on the day I was there, the priest being a young man who was a stranger to them, only a few were present. It was a pitiful sight. The dilapidated adobe building, empty and comfortless; the ragged poverty-stricken creatures, kneeling on the bare ground,-a few Mexicans, with some gaudiness of attire, setting off the Indians' poverty still more. In front of the chapel, on a rough cross-beam supported by two forked posts, set awry in the ground, swung a bell bearing the date of 1770. It was one of the bells of the old San Diego Mission. Standing bareheaded, the priest rang it long and loud: he rang it several times before the

ent." Some of them he would "trust any time as high as twenty dollars." When I asked him how they earned their money, he seemed to have no very distinct idea. Some of them had a little stock; they might now and then sell a horse or a cow, he said; they hired as laborers whenever they could get a chance, working at sheep-shearing in th

iles of refuse and brush, old blankets, old patches of sail-cloth, old calico, dead pine boughs, and sticks all heaped together in shapeless mounds; hollow, one perceives on coming nearer them, and high enough for human beings to creep under. These are the homes of Indians. I have seen the poorest huts of the most poverty-stricken wilds in Italy, Bavaria, Norway, and New Mexico; but never have I seen anything, in shape of shelter for human creatures, so loathsome as the kennels in which some of t

an hovels are within a short distance of the beach where the friars first landed, in 1769, and began their work. No doubt, Father Junipero and Father Crespí, arm in arm, in ardent converse, full of glowing anticipation of the grand future results of their labor

he Cahuillas, situated in the San Jacinto range, is a school whose teacher is paid by the United States Government. She is a widow with one little daughter. She has built for herself a room adjoining the school-house. In this she lives alone, with her child, in the heart of the Indian village; there is not a white person within ten miles. She says that the village is as well-ordered, quiet, and peaceable as it is possible for a

barbarism. He ruled his band like an emperor, and never rode abroad without an escort of from twenty to thirty men. When he stopped one of his Indians ran forward, bent down, took off his spurs, then, kneeling on all-fours, made of his back a stool, on which Juan stepped in dismounting and mounting. In 1850 an

le my own way. If they deserve hanging, I will hang them. If a w

en grave, the body of the murdered man had been laid. Into this grave, on the top of the corpse of his victim,

described as looking like an old African lion, shaggy and fierce; but he was always cordial and affectionate in his r

ands as sheep-shearers and harvesters. The women make baskets, lace, and from the fibre of the yucca plant, beautiful and durable mats, called "cocas," which are much sought after by C

ttle peach and apricot orchards, irrigating ditches, and some fences. In one of the houses I found a neatly laid wooden floor, a sewing-machine, and the walls covered with pictures cut from illustrated newspapers which had been given to them by the school te

village will be in the colony's way. In fact, the colony must have its lands and its water. It is only a question of a very little time, the

planted there, are in good bearing. His grandson Jesus, a young man twenty years old, in the summer of 1881 ploughed up and planted twenty acres of wheat. The boy also studied so faithfully in school that year-his first year at school-that he learned to read

o, Cal., M

Te

y friends, I write you in reg

be, settled with his people in the San Jacinto valley. The people have always b

made, taking in all the little farms, the stream of water, and the village. Upon this survey the United States Government gave a patent. It seems hard for us to be driven from our homes that we

of facts, I, for my people (I ask noth

ght this great wrong done to a

may have justic

tfully

esus C

to rich Mexican proprietors in the neighborhood. Jesus's mother is a tall, superbly formed woman, with a clear skin, hazel nut-brown eyes that thrill one with their limpid brightness, a nose straight and strong, and a mouth like an Egyptian priestess. She is past forty, but she is strikingly handsome still; and one does not wonder at hearing the tragedy of her early youth, when, for years, she believed herself the wife of Jesus's father, lived in his house as a wife, worked as a wi

pleted; the valley has been divided up; the land on which the village of Saboba stands is now the property of a San Bernardino merchant. An

lendid specimen of the best longevity which her race and the California air can produce. We found her in bed, where she spends most of her time,-not lying, but sitting cross-legged

ng care of the sacristy, washing the priests' laces, mending vestments, and filling various offices of trust in the mission. A sailor from a French vessel lying in the harbor wished to marry her; but the friars would not give their consent, because the man was a drunkard and dishonest. Carmen was well disposed to him, and much flattered by his love-making. He used to write letters to her, which she brought to this Mexican boy to read. It was a droll sight to see her face, as he, now wh

round, under a sort of booth porch, in front of their hovel. Laura was making a feint of grinding acorn-meal in a stone bowl; Benjamina was raking the ashes, with her claw-like old fingers, for hot coals to start the fire afresh; her skin was like an elephant's, shrivelled, black, hanging in folds and welts on her neck and breast and bony arms; it was not like anything human; her shrunken eyes, bright as beads, peered out from under thickets of coarse grizzled gray hair. Laura wore a white cloth band around her head, tied on with a strip of scarlet flannel; above that, a tattered black shawl, which gave her the look of an aged imp. Old baskets, old pots, old pans, old stone mortars and

credible sight. The more she stirred and sang and lifted her arms, the less alive she looked. We asked the step-daughter if they were happy and wished to live. Laughing, she repeated the question to them. "Oh, yes, we wish to live forever," they replied. They were greatly terrified, the daughter said, when the railway cars first ran through San Gabriel. They thought it was the devil bringing fire to burn up the world. Their chief solace is tobacco. To beg it, Benjamina will creep about in

stone steps leading to the belfry have crumbled; the walls of the little graveyard are broken in many places, the paling and the graves are thrown down. On the day we were there, a memorial service for the dead was going on in the chapel; a great square altar was draped with black, decorated with silver lace and ghastly funereal emblems; candles were burning; a row of kneeling black-shawled women were holding lighted candies in their hands; two old Indians were chanting a Latin Mass from a tattered missal bound in rawhide; the whole place was full of chilly gloom, in sharp contrast to the bright valley outside, with its sunlight and silence. This mass was f

for air, and there was no furniture except one chair and a half-dozen trunks. The Indians, like the Norwegian peasants, keep their clothes and various properties all neatly packed away in boxes or trunks. As I fell asleep, I wondered if in the morning I should see Indian heads on the pillows opposite me; the whole place was swarming with men, women, and babies, and it seemed impossible for them to spare so many beds; but, no, when I waked, there were the beds still undisturbed; a soft-eyed Indian girl was on her knees rummaging in one of the trunks; seeing me awake, she murmured a few words in Indian, which conveyed her apology as well a

d plenty of other beds." The hospitable lie did not deceive me, for by examination I had convinced myself that the greater part of the family must have slept on the bare earth in the kitchen. They would not have taken pay for our lodging, except that they had just been forced to give so much for the mass for Margarita's soul, and it had been hard for them to raise the money. Twelve dollars the priest had charged for the mass; and in addition they had to pay for the candles, silver lace, black cloth, etc., nearly as much more. They had earnestly desired to have the mass s

f barley, wheat, hay, and peas; a little herd of horses and cows grazing, and several flocks of sheep. The men were all away sheep-shearing; the women were at work in the fields, some hoeing, some clearing out the irrigating ditches, a

k, a stealthy narrow footpath appeared; through willow copses, sunk in meadow grasses, across shingly bits of alder-walled beach it creeps, till it comes out in a lovely spot,-half basin, half rocky knoll,-where, tucked away in nooks and hollows, are the little Indian houses, eight or ten of them, some of adobe, some of the tule-reeds: small patches of corn, barley, potatoes, and hay; and each little front yard fenced in by palings, with roses, sweet-peas, poppies, and mignonette growing inside. In the first house we reached, a woman was living alone. She was so alarmed at the sight of us that she shook. There could not be a more pitiful comment on the state of perpetual distrust and alarm in which the poor creatures live, t

ent owner, in great dairy farms. The parish priest of Monterey told me much of the pitiable condition of these remnants of the San Carlos Indians. He can do little or nothing for them, though their condition makes his heart ache daily. In that half-foreign English which is alway

bearing on the question of the Indians' right to the lands they

ad force here, and never assailed by any laws or executive acts since, till 1834 and 1846; and impregnable to these.... No past maladministration of laws c

pt the occasional setting off of reservations by executive orders, which, if the lands reserved were worth anything, were speedily revoked at the bidding of Cali

an Bureau by their present agent

for the third and perhaps the last time, emphasize that necessity by saying that whether Government will immediately heed the pleas that have been made in behalf of these people

long-suffering of the people who are in this immediate danger of being driv

lands and protect them in their rights, the chapter of the history of the Mission Ind

left to be saved. These are in their present homes "only on the patien

HE CITY OF

rather than for prose. It reads like a page out of some new "Earthly P

perfume of century-long summers added to its flavor. Summers century-long? One might say a stronger thing than that of them

gh, no doubt, for the first fifty years of the city's life, during which not a municipal record of any sort or kind was written,-"Nuestra Se?ora Reina

ere no longer young. They had fought for Spain in many parts of the Old World, and followed her uncertain fortunes to the New. Ten y

eaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, add

osas, and Canero, these were their names: happy soldiers all, honored

, poor little waifs of camp and march. What a "braw flitting" was it for them, away from the drum-beat forever into the shelter of their own sunny home! The legend says

, with many Indian neophytes, and Don Felipe, the m

the banner of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels unfurled, and the new town marke

e kind of grant that these worthy Spanish soldiers and their sons contented themselves with, however, hardly deserved recording,-in fact, was not a grant at all, since its continuance depended entirely on the care a man took of his house and the improvement he put on his land. If he left

wing of the abandonment, to grant the property to the informant, who then ac

ink that there must have been left from those days teeming records of alienated estates, shifted tenures, and angry feuds b

chards of the San Gabriel Mission lay only twelve miles away. These vineyards, orchards, and granaries, so near at hand, must have been sore temptation to idleness. Each head of a family had been presented, by the paternal Spanish king, with "two o

ecessary, it seems, to give them any implements of labor except "one hoe." What could a family do, in the way of work, with "one hoe"? Evidently, they did not work, neither they, nor their sons, nor the

as a grandfather or grandmother-to rise every morning at the rising of the morning star, and at once to strike up a hymn. At the first note every person in the house would rise,

the Virgin, to Jesus, or to some saint

O Mother

o win a literal translation of part of it, in the soft, Spanish-voiced, broken English, so

, O s

nd we w

er h

ur r

ers a

e heave

all r

we to

g harmo

g to

utiful

ss of

beautif

ed we

rs are

eautif

ebrows ar

rehead

ce turn

towa

eyes' r

beautifu

white

ue to your

the aged leader of the family choir. Then the

country regions in California, Mexican homes in which

last hour drew near, this robe was flung over their breasts, and they died happy, their stiffening fingers grasping its folds. The dead body was wrapped in it, and laid on the mud floor of the house, a stone being placed under the head to raise it a few inches. Thus the body must

If it were a woman who lay dead, only women might kneel and pray and watch

ues had so comforted its last conscious moments, was carried to the grave on a board, in the centre

e of them to the devout, owned a spring wagon, the only one in the country. By dint of entreaty, the people were finally prevailed upon to allow their dead to be carried in this wagon to the burial-place. For a long time, however, they refused to have horses put to the wagon, but drew it by hand all the

There had been brought into the town a few old-fashioned, high-post, canopied bedsteads, and from these the first catafalques were made. Gilded, decorated with gold and

of them, Tomasa Camera by name, was herself over a hundred years old. Tomasa was infirm of foot; so they propped her with pillows in a little cart, and drew her to the house that she might not miss of the occasion. All night long, the fourteen squatted or sat o

praying, and smoking. In this outer circle any one might come and go at pleasure; but into the

tumultuous years. Greedy traders from all parts of the world added their rivalries and interventions to the civil and military disputation. In the general anarchy and confusion, the peaceful and peace-loving Catholic Fathers were robbed of their lands, their converts were scattered, their ind

men's determination never to wear long trousers to dances; nor to permit dances to be held in houses or halls, it having been the pr

the centre of the enclosure directed the dances. Stopping in front of the girl whom he wished to have join the set, he clapped his han

re at this time were such as to make riding a fine show. Around the crown of the broad-brimmed sombrero was twisted a coil of gold or silver cord; over the shoulders was flung, with ostentatious carelessness, a short cloak of velvet or brocade; the waistcoats were embroidered in gold, silver, or gay colors; so also were the

orses. They turned the near neighborhood of a church on Sunday into a sort of picket-ground, or horse-trainers' yard, full of horse-posts and horses; and the scene was far more like a horse-fair than like an occasion of holy observance. There seems to have been a curious mixture of reverence and irreverence in their natures. They confessed sins and underwent penances with the simplicity of children; but when, in 1821, the Church issued an edict against that "escandalosisima" dance, the waltz, declaring that whoever dared to dance it should be exc

great circuit of gardens, orchards, vineyards, and corn-fields, and its suburbs are fast filling up with houses of a showy though cheap architecture. But it has not yet shaken off its

igh with oranges, their golden opulence contrasting weirdly with the shabbiness of their surroundings and the evident poverty of their owner; close following on the gold of one of these, one has sometimes the luck to see another cart, still more antiquated and rickety, piled high with something-he cannot imagine what-terra-cotta red in grotesque shapes; it is fuel,-the same sort which Villavicencia, Quintero, and the rest probably burned, when they

he time of the first settlement; the low adobe house of one of the early

the day idle boys and still idler men are to be seen basking on the fountain's stone rim, or lying, face down, heels in air, in the triangles of shade made by the cypress croquettes. There is in Los Angeles much of this ancient and ingenious style of shearing and compressing foliage into unnatural and dis

he hill. Wooden staircases and bits of terrace link and loop the odd little perches together; bright green pepper-trees, sometimes tall enough to shade two or three tiers of roofs, give a graceful plumed draping at the sides, and some of the steep fronts are covered with bloom, in so

, vast open country, billowy green with vineyard and orchard; beyond this, in clear weather, shining glints and threads of ocean, and again beyond, in the farthest outing, hill-crowned islands, misty blue against the sky. No one knows Los Angeles who does not climb to these sunny outlying heights, and roam and linger on them man

ld Franciscan establishments a world-wide fame, and to the society whose tone and customs they created an atmosp

fast-vanishing past. Strongholds also of a religious faith, almost as obsolete, in its sort and degre

e tale of each one of these miracles. She is herself a sad cripple; her feet swollen by inflammation, which for many years has given her incessant torture and made it impossible for her to walk, except with tottering steps, from room to room, by help of a staff. This, she says, is the only thing her saint has not cured. It is her "cross," her "mortification of the flesh," "to take her to heaven." "He knows best." As she speaks, her eyes perpetually seek the picture, resting on it with a look of ineffable adoration. She has seen tears roll down its cheeks more than once, she says; and it often smiles on her when they are alone. When strangers enter the room she can always tell, by its expression, whether the saint is or is not ple

on, a black silk handkerchief wound like a turban around her head, a plaid ribosa across her shoulders, contrasting sharply with her shabby wine-co

him against the wall till he was black in the face. And her sister came running up in terror, imploring her not to kill him. But all that strength is gone now, she says sadly; her memory also. Each day, as soon as she has finished her prayers, she has to put away her rosary in a special place, or else she forgets that the prayers have been said. Many priests have desired to possess her precious miracle-working s

n Fernando; an incense cup and spoon, and massive silver candlesticks; cartridge-boxes of leather, with Spain's ancient seal stamped on them; a huge copper caldron and scales from San Gabriel; a bunch of keys of hammered iron, locks, scissors, reaping-hooks, shovels, carding-brushes for wool and for flax: all made by the Indian workmen in the missions. There was also one old lock, in which the key was rusted fast and immovable, which seemed to me fuller of suggestion than anything else there of the sealed and ended past to which it had belonged; and a curious little iron cannon, in shape like an ale-mug, about eight inches high, with a hole in the side and in the top, to be used by setting it on the ground and laying a trail of powder to the opening in the side. This gave the Indians great delight. It was fired at the times of church festivals, and in seasons of drought to bring rain. Another curious instrument of racket was the matr

ead and laughing good-naturedly, when the shopkeeper remonstrated with her husband, who was heaping ar

ck, her feet on a cushion on the ground; in front of her, another low box, on this a lace-maker's pillow, with knotted fringe stretched on it; at her left hand a battered copper caldron, holding hot coals to warm her fingers and to light her cigarettes. A match she will never use; and she has seldom been without a cigarette in her mouth since she was six years old. On her right hand is a chest filled with her treasures,-rags of damask, silk, velvet, lace, muslin, ribbon, artificial flowers, flosses, worsteds, silks on spools; here she sits, day in, day out, making cotton fringes and, out of shreds of silk, tiny embroidered scapulars, which she sells to all devout and charitable people of the region. She also teaches the children of the parish to read and to pray. The walls of her hovel are papered with tattered pictures, including many gay-colored ones, taken off tin cans, their flaunting signs reading drolly,-"Perfection Press Mackerel, Boston, Mass.," "Charm Baking Powder," and "Knowlton's Inks," alternating with "Toledo Blades" and clipper-ship advertisements. She finds these of great use in both teac

nest linen, embroidered or trimmed with lace; a tiny plume not more than an inch long, of gold exquisitely carved,-this was her chief treasure. It looked beautiful in his hat, she said, but it was too valuable to wear often. Hid away here among the image's best clothes were more of the gold voti

God would take care of the rest, and so he had; she never wants for anything; not only is she never hungry herself, but she always has food to give away. No one would suppose it, but many people come to eat with her in her house. God never forgets her one minute. She is very happy. She is never ill; or if she is, she has two remedies, which, in all her life, have never failed to cure her, and they cost nothing,-saliva and ear-wax. For a pain, the sign of the cross, made with saliva on the spot which is in pain, is instantaneously effective; for an eruption or any skin disorder, the application of ear-wax is a sure cure. She is very glad to live so close to the church; the father has promised her this room as long as she lives; when she dies, it will be no trouble, he says, to pick her up and carry her across the road to the church. In a gay painted box, standing on two chairs, so as to be kept from the dampness

some of her Indian neighbors have, well into a second century. Before she ceases from her peaceful, pitiful little labors, new generations of millionnair

can woman, flitting about among the plants, or sporting with a superb Saint Bernard dog. Her clear olive skin, soft brown eyes, delicate sensitive nostrils, and broad smiling mouth, are all of the Spanish madonna type; and when her low brow is bound, as is often her wont, by turban folds of soft brown or green gauze, her face becomes a picture indeed. She is the young wife of a gray-headed Mexican se?or, of whom-by his own most gracious permission-I shall speak by his familiar name, Don Antonio. Whoever has the fortune to pass as a friend across the threshold of this house finds himself trans

well understands the tongue he cannot or will not use for himself. He is sixty-five years of age, but he is young: the best waltzer in Los Angeles to-day; his eye keen, his blood fiery quick; his memory like a burning-glass bringing into sharp light and focus a half-century as if it were a yesterday. Full of sentiment, of an intense and poetic nature, he looks back to the lost empire of his race and people on the California shores with a sorro

suffering involved in it is inevitable. It is part of the great, unreckoned price which must al

t school that was kept in the place. This was nearly a half-century ago. On the walls of the room still hang maps and charts which they used; and carefully preserved, with the tender reverence of which only poetic n

ty, passing from hand to hand and house to house. It was on the old Lancaster system that Los Angeles set out in educating its children; and here are still preserved the formal and elaborate instructions for teachers and schools on that plan; also volumes of Spain's laws for military judges in 1781, and a quaint old volume c

ission, are among the curiosities of this room. The music of the first quadrilles ever danced in Mexico is here: a ragged pamphlet, which, no doubt, went gleeful rounds

ggings and knee-breeches. The place of honor in the room is given, as well it might be, to a small cannon, the first cannon brought into California. It was made in 1717, and was brought by Father Junipero Serra to San Diego in 1769. Afterward it was given to the San Gabriel Mission, but it still bears its old name, "San

n false pretences, thrown into prison, shipped off like convicts from place to place, with no one to protect them or plead their cause. Revolution succeeded upon revolution, and it was a most unhappy period for all refined and cultivated persons who had joined the colony enterprises. Young men of education and breeding were glad to earn their daily bread by any menial labor that offered. Don Antonio and several of his young friends, who had all studied medicine together, spent the greater part of a year in making shingles. The one hope and aim of most of them was to earn money enough to get back to Mexico. Don Antonio, however, seems to have had more versatility and capacity than his friends

onate pride; and there are few things she enjoys better than translating to an eager l

the colony from Mexico. The juggler threatened to turn the gambler into a crow; the gambler, after watching his tricks for a short time, became frightened, and asked young Antonio, in serious good faith, if he did not believe the juggler had mad

e announced his intention of becoming a priest, and began his studies at once. These he faithfully pursued for a year, leading all the while a life of great devotion. At the end of that time preparations were made for his ordination at San José. The day was set, the

-whether she might not any morning deliver them over to the enemy. Of all Don Antonio's graphic narratives of the olden time, none is more interesting than those which describe his adventures during the days of this contest. On one of the first approaches made by the Americans to Los Angeles, he went out with his little haphazard company of men and boys to meet them. He had but one cannon, a small one, tied by ropes on a cart axle. He had but one small keg of powder which was good for anything; all the rest was bad, would merely go off "pouf, pouf," the se?ora said, and the ball would pop down near the mouth of the cannon. With

friendly Indian's tent to change his clothes. Hardly had he got them off when the sound of horses' hoofs was heard. The Indian flung himself down, put his ear to the ground, and exclaimed, "Americanos! Americanos!" Almost in the same second they were at the tent's door. As they halted, Don Antonio, clad only in his drawers and stockings, crawled out at the back of the tent, and creeping on all fours reached a

rafty Indian assented to all the Americans proposed, said that Don Antonio would be sure to be caught in a few days, advised them to search in a certain rancheria which he described, a few miles off, and in an opposite direction from the way in which he intended to guide Don Antonio. As soon as the Americans had gone, he bound up Antonio's feet in strips of rawhide, gave him a blanket and an old tattered hat, the best his stores afforded, and then led him by a long and difficult trail to a spot high up in the mountains where the old women of the band were gathering acorns. By the time they reached this place, blood was trickling from Antonio's feet and legs, and he was well-nigh fainting with fatigue and excitement. Tears rolled down the old women's cheeks when they saw him. Some of them had been servants in his father's house, and loved him. One brought gruel; another bathed his feet; others ran in search of healing leaves of different sorts. Bruising these in a stone mortar, they rubbed him from head to foot with the wet fibre. All his pain and weariness vanished as by magic. His wounds healed, and in a day he was ready to set off for home. There was but one pony in the old women's camp. This was old, vicious, blind o

o short for his legs. At the next house his friend was as much too tall, and his

s which he had worn from the Indian village, he rode boldly up to the porch of his father's house, and in an impudent tone called for brandy. The terrified

ing air, gay even in midwinter, and as spicy then as the gardens of other lands are in June, I spent many an

over the events of his youth. Never, however, in his most ardent youth, could his eyes have gazed on his fairest sweetheart's face with a look of greater devotion than that with which they n

ear the s

et voice th

hat truly

he wishe

o with ardent l

fice himse

depri

r of

t swee

t voice that

waited for me. The se?ora never allowed me to depart without bringing to me, in the carriage, farewell gifts of flowers and fruit: clusters of grapes, dried and fresh; great boughs full of oranges, mor

DAYS IN

must choose which he will do or take. Chancing right in a decision, and seeing clearly what a blunder any other decision would have been, only makes the next such decision harder, and contributes to increased vacillation of purpose and infirmity of will, until one c

y to the same thing that our recollections of the journey are still mingled with that sort of e

ooth sailing there. It is British Channel and North Sea and off the Hebrides combined,-as many different twists and chops and swells as there are waves. People who have crossed the Atlantic again and again without so much as a qualm are desperately ill between San Francisco and Portland. Ther

must have been well wonted to seas; and being worth forty millions of livres, he could afford to make himself as comfortable in the matter of a ship as was possible a century and a half ago. His grant was a princely domain, an empire five times larger than France itself. What could he have been thinking of, to hand it back to King Louis like a worthless bauble of wh

wn, or upper Astoria, is a mile and a half, two thirds bridges and piers. Long wooden wharves, more streets than wharves, resting on hundreds of piles, are built out to deep water. They fairly fringe the shore; and the street nearest the water is little more than a succession of bridges from wharf to wharf. Frequent bays and inlets make up, leaving unsightly muddy wastes when the tide goes out. To see family washing hung out on lines over these tidal flats, and the family infants drawing their go-carts in the mud below, was a droll sight. At least every other building on these strange wharf streets is a salmon cannery, and acres of

which often burst with the weight of the captured salmon. It is a strange life, and one sure to foster a man's worst traits rathe

ow terraces rising one above the other on jutting and jagged levels of the river-bank. They command superb off-looks across and up and down the majestic river, which is here far more a bay

ponds, alder-grown cliffs, hemlock and spruce copses on its inland side; on the water-side, bustling wharves, canneries, fishermen's boarding-houses, great spaces filled in with bare piles waiting to be floored; at every turn shore and sea seem to change sides, and clumps of brakes, fresh-hewn stumps, maple

towns. They work day and night, get big wages, go from place to place, and spend money recklessly; a sort of commercial Bohemian, difficult to handle and often dangerous. They sometimes elect to take fifty cents an hour and all the beer they can drink, rather than a dollar an hour and no beer. At the time we saw them, they were on beer wages. The foaming beer casks stood at short intervals along the wharf,-a pitcher, pail, and

hotel, the railroad station, and its warehouses were entirely surrounded by water, and we sailed, in seemingly deep water, directly over the wharf where landings were usually made. At other towns on the way we ran well up into the fields, and landed passengers or freight on stray sand-spits, or hillocks, from which they could get off again on the other side by small boats. We passed scores of deserted houses, their windows open, the water swashing over their door-sills; gardens with only tops of bushes in sight, one with red roses swaying back and forth, limp and helpless on th

wept away all malarial influences; that the water did no injury whatever to the farms,-on the contrary, made the

t, and a tiny farm-house. These were said to be usually lumbermen's homes; it was warmer up there than in the bottom, and crops thrived. In the no

and people will appreciate their value, and never let their near hills be shorn of trees. Not one tree more should be cut. Already there are breaks in the forest horizons, which mar the picture greatly; and it would take but a few days of ruthless wood choppers' work to rob the city forever of its backgrounds, turning them into unsightly barrens. The city is on both sides of the river, and is called East and West Portland. With the usual perversity in such cases, the higher ground and the sunny eastern frontage belong to the less

ty in the United States except New Haven. Wheat and lumber and salmon have made it rich. Oregon wheat brings such prices in England that ships can af

des are Linn?a, red clover, yarrow, May-weed, and dandelion, looking to New England eyes strangely familiar and unfamiliar at once. Never in New England woods and roadsides do they have such a luxurious diet of water and rich soil, and such comfortable warm winters. The white clover especially has an air of spendthrifty indulgence about it which is delicious. It riots through the woods, even in their densest, darkest depths, making luxuriant pasturage where one would least look for it. On these wooded heights are scores of dairy farms, which have no clearings except of the space needful for the house and outbuildings. The cows, each with a bell at

me grains, arranged in circles,-wheat six feet high, oats ten, red clover over six, and timothy grass eight. To see Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Irish, come in, stand wonderingly before this case, and then begin to ask their jargon of questions, was an experience which did more in an hour to make one realize what the present tide of immigration to the New Northwest really is than reading of statistics could do in a year. These immigrants are pouring in, it is estimated, at the rate of at least a hundred and fifty a day,-one hundred by way of San Francisco and Portland, twenty-five by the Puget Sound ports, and another twenty-five overland by wagons; no two with the same aim, no two alike in quality or capacity. To listen to their inquiries and their narratives, to give them advice and help, requires almost preternatural patience and sagacity. It might be doubted, perhaps, whether this requisite combination could be found in an American; certainly no one

ng when shores are miles apart, and, in many broad vistas, water is all that can be seen. These vistas, in times of high water, when the Columbia may be said to be fairly "seas over," are grand. They shine and flicker for miles, right and left, with green

e should have made landing was the narrow ridge-line of its roof; and this was at least a third of a mile out from shore. The bo

es,-dark forests at top, shifting shades of blue in every rift between the hills, iridescent rainbow colors on the slopes, and gray cl

. Looking ahead, we could see sometimes only castellated mountain lines, meeting across the river, like walls; as we advanced they retreated, and opened with new vistas at each opening. Shining threads of water spun down in the highest places, sometimes falling sheer to the river, sometimes sinking out of sight in forest depths midway down, like the famed fosses of the Norway fjords. Long sky-lines of pines and firs, which we knew to be from one hundred to three hundred feet tall, looked in the aerial perspective no more than a mossy border along the wall. A little girl, looking up at them, gave by one artless exclamation a true idea of this effect. "Oh," she cried, "they look just as if you could pick a little bunch of them." At intervals along the right-hand shore were to be seen the white-tented encampments of the Chinese laborers on the ro

only another instance of the good things caught on chances. Next to me stood an old couple, the man's neck so burnt and wrinkled it looked like fiery red alligator's skin; his clothes, evidently his best, donned for a journey, were of a fashion so long gone by that they had a quaint dignity. The woman wore a

oting; and the old man came near being shaken off the st

asier'n a bucki

other. "'T ain't m

e in '49?" I

reckon there hain't nobody got a lien on to it yet. We've raised nine children, an' the youngest on em's twenty-one. My woman's been sick for two or three years; this is the first time

t. I'd like to see them times back agen, too. I vow I'm put to 't now to know where to go. This civilyzation," with an indescribably sarcastic emphasis

ndians here in tho

'twas all Injuns. All this country

you fin

attle 'll all be kind, an' come ter yer when you call 'em. I don't never want to know anythin' more about a man than the way his stock acts. I hain't got a critter that won't come up by its name an' lick my hand. An' it's jest so with folks. Ef a man's mean to you, yer goin' to be mean to him, every time. The great thing with Injuns is, ne

know Chief Jos

ould do with me. I wa'n't a mite afraid; I jest looked him right square in the eye. That's another thing with Injuns; you've got to look 'em in the eye, or they won't trust ye. Well, Jo, he took up a torch, a pine knot he had burnin', and he held it close't up to my face, and looked me up an' down, an' down an' up; an' I never flinched; I jest looked him up an' down's good

as in Indian Territory. He had been out of the State at the t

ck!" he exclaimed,-"a dirty mean

ans. "Why, when he died, there wa'n't a white woman in all this country that didn't mourn 's if she'd lost a friend; they felt safe's long's he was round. When he knew he was dyin' he jest ba

th its rocks and islands on one hand, high cliffs and fir forests on the other; these three weather-beaten, eager, aged

ton Territory side of the river, terraces and slopes of cleared lands and occasional settlements. Great numbers of drift-logs passed us here, coming down apace, fr

them, and pull them in to shore, and much money is made at it. One lucky fisher of logs, on the Snake River Fork, once drew ashore six hundred cords in a single year. Sometimes a whole boom gets loose fro

so weird, as volcanic slag; and the piles, ridges, walls, palisades of it thrown up at this point look like the roof-trees, chimneys, turrets of a half-engulfed Pandemonium. Dark slaty and gray tints spread over the whole shore, also; it is all volcanic matter, oozed or boiled over, and hardened into rigid shapes of death and destruction. The place is terrible to see.

e took boat again for Umatilla, one

of the black slag; on the Oregon side, high brown cliffs mottled with red and yellow lichens, and great beaches and dunes of sand, which had blown into windrows and curving hillock lines

salmon to dry. We were within so short a distance of the banks that friendly smiles could be distinctly seen; and one of the younger squaws, laughing back at the lookers-on on deck, picked up a salmon, and waving it in her right hand ran swiftly along towards an outjutting point. She was a gay creature, with scarlet fringed leggings, a pale green blanket, and on her head a twisted

e fertility. A failure of harvests is said never to have been known in that country; the average yield of wheat is thirty-five to forty bushels an acre, and oats have yielded a hundred bushels. Apples and peaches thrive, and are of a superior quality. The country is well watered, and has fine rolling plateaus from fifteen hundred to three thousand feet

a little village, half under water, he exclaimed, looking earnestly at a small building to whose window-sills the water nearly reached: "Well, I declare, Lucy's bee

the handsomest squaw ever seen in Oregon. In those days white men in wildernesses thought it small shame, if any, to take Indian women to live with them

. He said he had told her that she must go and live there with her relatives, while he went to California and looked about, and then he would send for her. The poor creature, who had no idea of treachery, came on board cheerfully and willingly, and he set her off at Columbus. This was in the early spring. Week after week, month after month, whenever his schooner stopped there, Lucy was on the shore, asking if he had heard from Pomeroy. For a long time, he said, he couldn't bear to tell her. At last he did; but she would not believe him. Winter came on. She had got a few boards together and built herself a sort of hut, near a house where lived an eccentric old bachelor, who finally took compassion on her, and to save her from freezing let her come into his shanty to sleep. He was a mysterious old man, a recluse, with a morbid aversion to women; and at the outset it was a great struggle for him to let even an Indian woman cross his threshold. But little by little Lucy won her way: first she washed the d

ooved ebony. One of the pinnacles has a strange resemblance to the figure of an Indian. It is called the Chief, and the semblance is startling,-a colossal figure, with a plume-crowned head, turned as if gazing bac

of a new moon and one star; they seemed tossing in a tumultuous sea of dark clouds. In this glimmering darkness the lava walls an

ened surfaces stippled in with yellow and brown. High up above are wheat-fields in clearings, reaching to the sky-line of the hills. Great slopes of crumbling and

nd a winter in a place, so great difference does it make when right ha

t snow-peaks in all their glory; and our run down from the Dalles to Portland was the best day of our three on the river. Our steamer was steered by hydraulic pressure; and it was a wonderful thing to sit in the pilot-house and see the slight touch of a f

e old Spanish government in California. Whenever a royal decree was issued in Madrid in regard to the Indies or New Spain, a copy of it was sent to every viceroy in the Spanish Dominions; he communicated it to his next subordinate, who in turn sent it to all the g

mmanded by John Kendrick, which sailed from Boston in 1787, bound on a voyage of discovery to the Russian settlements on the northern coast of the p

ain Gray took the "Columbia" to China, and did not sail into San Francisco harbor at all, whereby he escaped being "examined with caution and delicacy" by the small boat in possession of the San Franc

first one was launched there. Two were built and launched in one year, the "Columbia" and the "Lot Whitcomb." The "Lot Whitcomb" was launched

its value. One of Benton's most enthusiastic predictions was that an "emporium of Asiatic commerce" would be situated at the mouth of the Columbia, and that "a stream of Asiatic trade would pour into the valley of the Mississippi through the channel of Oregon." But the future of Oregon and Washington rests not on any transmission of the riches of other countries, however important an element in their prosperity that may ultimately become. Their true riches are their own and inalienable. They are to be among the great feeders of the earth. Go

ce of the sea air and fogs. This valley region between these two ranges contains less than a third of the area of Washington and Oregon. The country east of the Cascade Mountains is no less fertile, but has a drier climate, colder winters, and hotter summers. Its elevation is from two to four thousand feet,-probably the very best elevations for health. A comparison of statistics of yearly death-rates cannot be made with absolute fairness between old and thick-settled and new and sparsely settled countries. Allowance must be made for t

ns themselves, yet graceful and sharp-cut as Egypt's pyramids; St. Helen's, a little lower, yet looking higher, with the marvellous curves of its slender shining cone, bent on and seemingly int

or computation, but it will be none the less real for that: it will be an element in the nature and character of every man and woman born within sight of the radiant splendor; and it will be strange if it does not ultimately