“There was nothing that could be swallowed and digested which the San Diego Indian would not eat. Snakes, half roasted and even raw, were toothsome dainties. The horned toad and the lizard had favorite places at each repast. Human parasites were not refused, and mice, gophers, bats, caterpillars, worms, entrails, and even carrion, were consumed with a greed that did not stop at pounds. Hittel says that twenty-four pounds of meat in a day was not too much for a Californian Indian, and Baegart mentions the case of one native who ate seventeen watermelons at a sitting. The smoking of wild tobacco was carried on to equal excess.”
The saintly Fathers deserve unlimited praise for making them accomplish so much and behave as well as they did. Those New Englanders who criticise them as severe in discipline must remember that at the same period our ancestors were persecuting Quakers and burning witches. The beautiful hospitality of these early priests should also be mentioned.
Alfred Robinson described a miracle play which he saw performed at San Diego at Christmas, in 1830, as akin to the miracle plays of mediæval Europe. The actors took the part of Gabriel, Lucifer, shepherds, a hermit, and Bartolo, a lazy vagabond who was the clown and furnished the element of comedy: the whole interspersed with songs and incidents better adapted to the stage than to the church.
CHAPTER IV.
EN ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES.
“Bless me, this is pleasant, Riding on the rail!”
On the Surf Line from San Diego to Los Angeles, a seventy-mile run along the coast, there is so much to see, admire, and think about, that the time passes rapidly without napping or nodding. Take a chair seat on the left of car—the ocean side—and enjoy the panoramic view from the window: the broad expanse of the Pacific, its long curling breakers, the seals and porpoises tumbling about in clumsy frolics, the graceful gulls circling above them, the picturesque cañons, and the flocks of birds starting from the ground, frightened by our approach. This we watch for more than an hour; then the scene changes, and, leaving the water, we have glimpses of wondrous carpets of wildflowers, the golden poppy predominant, miles of brilliant green on either hand, peeps at the three missions, the groves at Orange, the town of Santa Ana, and Anaheim, the parent colony, the first of all the irrigated settlements of Southern California, now a wealthy city.
The missions are always interesting. San Juan Capistrano was seriously injured by an earthquake in 1812; the tower was shaken so severely that it toppled over during morning mass, killing thirty of the worshippers, the priests escaping through the sacristy. It was the latest and costliest of the missions. “Its broken olive mill and crumbling dove-cote, and the spacious weed-grown courts and corridors, are pathetic witnesses to the grandeur of the plans and purposes of the founders, and also of the rapidity with which nature effaces the noblest works of human hands.”
But San Luis Rey is in good condition, having been restored to something of its original beauty, and recently re-dedicated. The walled enclosures once contained fifty-six acres, six being covered by the sacred edifice, its arched colonnades, and the cloisters, in which the Fathers lived, surrounded by three thousand baptized savages. Mrs. Jeanne C. Carr quotes a stage-driver with whom she talked on the box as saying: “Ye see, ma’am, what them old padders didn’t know ‘bout findin’ work for their subjicks and pervidin’ for the saints ‘n’ angels, not to say therselves, wa’n’t wuth knowin’. They carried on all kinds o’ bizness. Meat was plenty, keepin’ an’ vittles was to be had at all the missions an’ ranches too, jes’ by settin’ round. The pastures and hills was alive with horses and cattle, an’ hides an’ taller was their coin. They cured and stacked the hides, dug holes in stiff ground, an’ run the taller into ‘em; it kep’ sweet until a ship laid up to Capistrano, then that taller turned into gold. They could load up a big ship in a single day, they had so many Indians to help.” And he proceeded to tell of his own lucky find: “A lot of that holy taller was lost ‘n’ fergot, nobuddy knows how many years. One night I went up into the grass beyant the mission to stake out my hosses; an’ when I druv the fust stake it went way deawn, like ‘twas in soft mud. I jes’ yanked it up: half on ‘t was kivered with grease. The evening was cool, but the day had been brilin’, an’ now mebbe ye kin guess how I found my taller mine. ‘Twas a leetle mouldy on top, but the heft on ‘t was hard,—a reg’lar bonanzy fer a stage-driver.”
It may seem irreverent to introduce this droll fellow in sharp contrast with the beautiful ruin, full of the most cherished memories of old Spain, but reality often gives romance a hard jar. It is pleasant to know that the expelled Franciscan order has just returned to California, and that San Luis Rey is now occupied. It is worth making the trip to San Juan to see the old bells struck, as in former times, by a rope attached to the clapper. They have different tones, and how eloquently they speak to us. These missions along the coast and a line farther inland are the only real ruins that we have in America, and must be preserved, whether as a matter of sentiment or money, and in some way protected from the vandals who think it jolly fun to lug off the old red tiles, or even the stone bowl for holy water—anything they can steal. At San Juan the plaster statues have been disgracefully mutilated by relic-hunters and thoughtless visitors. Eyes have been picked out, noses cut off, fingers carried away, and the altar-cloths everywhere have been slashed at the corners.
A society has been formed to try to save them, and one learned and enthusiastic mission lover proposes to revive the old Camino del Rey, or King’s Highway. “What could not the drive from San Diego to Sonoma be made if the State once roused herself to make it? Planted and watered and owned as an illustration of forestry, why should it not also as a route of pilgrimage rank with that to Canterbury or Cologne on the Rhine? The Franciscans have given to California a nomenclature which connects them and us permanently with what was great in their contemporary history, while we preserve daily upon our lips the names of the great chiefs of their own order.”
But where am I? Those mouldering walls led me into a reverie. Speaking of “ruins” reminds me of a Frenchman who called on the poet Longfellow in his old age and explained his visit in this way: “Sare, you ‘ave no ruins in dis country, so I ‘ave come to see you.”
The cactus hedge around each mission to keep the cattle in, and possibly the hostile Indians out, must have been effective. We see now and then a little that has survived. This makes me think of a curious bird I noticed in my drives at San Diego, the roadrunner, classed with the cuckoo. It has various names, the chaparral-cock, the ground-cuckoo, the prairie-cock, paisano, and worst of all, in classic nomenclature, the Geococcyx californianus.
It keeps on the ground most of the time, and can run with such swiftness that it cannot be easily overtaken by horse and hounds. It has a tail longer than its body, which it bears erect. It kills beetles, toads, birds, and mice, but has a special dislike for the rattlesnake, and often meets him and beats him in fair combat. When it finds one sleeping or torpid it makes a circle of cactus thorns around him so he cannot escape—for “future reference,” as my driver said.
This thorny circle is akin to the lariat made of horsehair, the ends sticking out roughly all around, with which the Indian used to encircle himself before going to sleep, as a protection from the rattlesnake, who could not cross it. But here we are at Los Angeles. Hear the bawling cabbies: “This way for The Westminster!” “Hollenbeck Hotel!”