"I must see him," replied Gaspar Manuel in a decided voice, "and before the Twenty-Fifth of December."
Again Ezekiel started:
"Soh! He knows of the Twenty-Fifth!" he muttered. After a moment's hesitation he said aloud: "This land which the Doctor bought from the Mexican government, and which he sent John Grubb to overlook, is fertile, is it not?"
Gaspar Manuel answered in a low voice, whose faintest tones were marked with a clear and impressive emphasis:
"The deserted mission house of San Luis stands in the center of a pleasant valley, encircled by fertile hills. Its walls of intermingled wood and stone are almost buried from view by the ever-green foliage of the massive trees which surround it. Once merry with the hum of busy labor, and echoing with the voice of prayer and praise, it is now silent as a tomb. Its vineyards and its orchards are gone to decay,—orchards rich with the olive and the apple, the pomegranate and the orange, stand neglected and forsaken, under an atmosphere as calm, a climate as delicious as southern Italy. And the hills and fields, which once produced the plantain and banana, cocoanut, indigo and sugar-cane—which once resounded with the voices of hundreds of Indian laborers, who yielded to the rule of the Jesuit Fathers—are now as sad and silent as a desert. And yet a happier sight you cannot conceive than the valley of the San Luis, in the lap of which stands the deserted mission-house. It is watered by two rivulets, which, flowing from the gorges of distant hills, join near the mission-house, into a broad and tranquil river, whose shores are always bright with the verdure of spring. The valley is surrounded, as I have said, by a range of rolling hills, which formerly yielded, by their inexhaustible fertility, abundant wealth to the Fathers. Behind these, higher and abrupt hills arise, clad with ever-green forests. In the far distance, rise the white summits of the Sierra Nevada."
"This mission was one of the many established between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific coast," interrupted Ezekiel, "by zealous missionaries of the Papal Church. If I mistake not, having obtained large grants of land from the Mexican government, they gathered the Indians into missions, reared huge mission-houses, and employed the Indians in the cultivation of the soil."
"Not only in California, on the west side of Sierra Nevada, but also far to the east of that range of 'Snow Mountains' abounded these missions, ruled by the Fathers and supported by the labor of the submissive Indians. But now, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, you will find the mission-houses silent and deserted. The rule of the Fathers passed away in 1836—in one of the thousand revolutions of Mexico—the missions passed into the hands of private individuals, and in some cases the Indians were transferred with the land."
"But the mission-house of San Luis?"
"Is claimed by powerful members of the Society of Jesus, who residing in the city of Mexico, have managed to keep a quiet hold upon the various governments, which have of late years abounded in that unhappy republic. They claim the mission-house and the lands, originally granted sixty years ago, to Brothers of their order by the Government, and they claim certain lands, not named in the original grant."
He paused, but Ezekiel Bogart completed the sentence: