MISSION OF SAN CARLOS.
This mission, founded 1770, stands in the Carmel valley, three miles from Monterey. Through its ample lands flows a beautiful stream of water, which every governor of the country, for the last thirty years, has purposed conducting to the metropolis. Its gardens supply the vegetable market of Monterey. Its pears are extremely rich in flavor. In its soil were raised, in 1826, the first potatoes cultivated in California. So little did the presiding padre think of this strange vegetable, he allowed the Indians to raise and sell them to the whalers that visited Monterey, without disturbing their profits. He was satisfied if the Indians would give him one salmon in ten out of the hundreds they speared in the stream which swept past his door. This mission, in 1825, branded 2300 calves; had 87,600 head of cattle, 1800 horses and mares, 365 yoke of oxen, nine sheep-farms, with an average of about 6,000 sheep on each, a large assortment of merchandise, and $40,000 in specie, which was buried on the report of a piratical cruiser on the coast. It was secularized in 1835. The church remains; but the only being I found in it was a large white owl, who seemed to mourn its fall.