MISSION OF SAN LUIS OBISPO.
This mission stands fourteen leagues southeast of San Miguel, and within three of the coast. It has always been considered one of the richest missions in California. The presiding priest, Luis Martinez, was a man of comprehensive purpose and indomitable force. His mission grant covered an immense tract of the richest lands on the seaboard. Every mountain stream was made to subserve the purposes of irrigation. He planted the cotton-tree, the lime, and a grove of olives, which still shower their abundant harvests on the tables of the Californians. He built a launch that run to Santa Barbara, trained his Indians to kill the otter, and often received thirty and forty skins a week from his children of the bow. His storehouse at Santa Margarita, with its high adobe walls, was one hundred and ninety feet long, and well stowed with grain. His table was loaded with the choicest game and richest wines; his apartments for guests might have served the hospitable intentions of a prince. He had 87,000 head of grown cattle, 2000 tame horses, 3500 mares, 3700 mules, eight sheep-farms, averaging 9000 sheep to each farm, and the broad Tulare valley, in which his Indians could capture any number of wild horses. The mayordomo of this mission in 1827, scattered on the ground, without having first ploughed it, 120 bushels of wheat, and then scratched it in with things called harrows, and harvested from the same over 7000 bushels. This was a lazy experiment, but shows what the land may yield when activity shall take the place of indolence. Father Martinez returned to Spain, taking with him $100,000 as the fruits of his mission enterprise. On the secularization of the mission in 1834, the property fell a prey to state exigency, and private rapacity A gloomy wreck of grandeur only remains.