Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

The present plaza of the city is near the original plaza marked out at the time of the first settlement; the low adobe house of one of the early governors stands yet on its east side, and is still a habitable building.

The plaza is a dusty and dismal little place, with a parsimonious fountain in the centre, surrounded by spokes of thin turf, and walled at its outer circumference by a row of tall Monterey cypresses, shorn and clipped into the shape of huge croquettes or brad-awls standing broad end down. At all hours of 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 distorted shapes. It comes, no doubt, of lingering reverence for the traditions of what was thought beautiful in Spain centuries ago; and it gives to the town a certain quaint and foreign look, in admirable keeping with its irregular levels, zigzag, toppling precipices, and houses in tiers one above another.

One comes sometimes abruptly on a picture which seems bewilderingly un-American, of a precipice wall covered with bird-cage cottages, the little, paling-walled yard of one jutting out in a line with the chimney-tops of the next one below, and so on down to the street at the base of the 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 solid curtains, of geranium, sweet alyssum, heliotrope, and ivy. These terraced eyries are not the homes of the rich: the houses are lilliputian in size, and of cheap quality; but they do more for the picturesqueness of the city than all the large, fine, and costly houses put together.

Moreover, they are the only houses that command the situation, possess distance and a horizon. From some of these little ten-by-twelve flower-beds of homes is a stretch of view which makes each hour of the day a succession of changing splendors,—the snowy peaks of San Bernardino and San Jacinto in the east and south; to the west, 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 many a day. Nor, even thus lingering, will any one ever know more of Los Angeles than its lovely outward semblances and mysterious suggestions, unless he have the good fortune to win past the barrier of proud, sensitive, tender reserve, behind which is hid the life of the few remaining survivors of the old Spanish and Mexican régime.

Once past this, he gets glimpses of the same stintless hospitality and immeasurable courtesy which gave to the old Franciscan establishments a world-wide fame, and to the society whose tone and customs they created an atmosphere of simple-hearted joyousness and generosity never known by any other communities on the American continent.

In houses whose doors seldom open to English-speaking people, there are rooms full of relics of that fast-vanishing past. Strongholds also of a religious faith, almost as obsolete, in its sort and degree, as are the garments of the aged creatures who are peacefully resting their last days on its support.

In one of these houses, in a poverty-stricken but gayly decorated little bedroom, hangs a small oil-painting, a portrait of Saint Francis de Paula. It was brought from Mexico, fifty-five years ago, by the woman who still owns it, and has knelt before it and prayed to it every day of the fifty-five years. Below it is a small altar covered with flowers, candlesticks, vases, and innumerable knick-knacks. A long string under the picture is hung full of tiny gold and silver votive offerings from persons who have been miraculously cured in answer to prayers made to the saint. Legs, arms, hands, eyes, hearts, heads, babies, dogs, horses,—no organ, no creature, that could suffer, is unrepresented. The old woman has at her tongue's end the 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 pleased with them, and whether their prayers will be granted. She was good enough to remark that he was very glad to see us; she was sure of it by the smile in his eye. He had wrought many beautiful miracles for her. Nothing was too trivial for his sympathy and help. Once when she had broken a vase in which she had been in the habit of keeping flowers on the altar, she took the pieces in her hands, and standing before him, said: "You know you will miss this vase. I always put your flowers in it, and I am too poor to buy another. Now, do mend this for me. I have nobody but you to help me." And the vase grew together again whole while she was speaking. In the same way he mended for her a high glass flower-case which stood on the altar.

Thus she jabbered away breathlessly in Spanish, almost too fast to be followed. Sitting in a high chair, her poor distorted feet propped on a cushion, a black silk handkerchief wound like a turban around her head, a plaid ribosa across her shoulders, contrasting sharply with her shabby wine-colored gown, her hands clasped around a yellow staff, on which she leaned as she bent forward in her eager speaking, she made a study for an artist.

She was very beautiful in her youth, she said; her cheeks so red that people thought they were painted; and she was so strong that she was never tired; and when, in the first year of her widowhood, a stranger came to her "with a letter of recommendation" to be her second husband, and before she had time to speak had fallen on his knees at her feet, she seized him by the throat, and toppling him backward, pinned 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 saint; but never till she dies will it leave her bedroom. Not a week passes without some one's arriving to implore its aid. Sometimes the deeply distressed come on their knees all the way from the gate before the house, up the steps, through the hall, and into her bedroom. Such occasions as these are to her full of solemn joy, and no doubt, also, of a secret exultation whose kinship to pride she does not suspect.

In another unpretending little adobe house, not far from this Saint Francis shrine, lives the granddaughter of Moreno, one of the twelve Spanish soldiers who founded the city. She speaks no word of English; and her soft black eyes are timid, though she is the widow of a general, and in the stormy days of the City of the Angels, passed through many a crisis of peril and adventure. Her house is full of curious relics, which she shows with a gentle, half-amused courtesy. It is not easy for her to believe that any American can feel real reverence for the symbols, tokens, and relics of the life and customs which his people destroyed. In her mind Americans remain to-day as completely foreigners as they were when her husband girded on his sword and went out to fight them, forty years ago. Many of her relics have been rescued at one time or another from plunderers of the missions. She has an old bronze kettle which once held holy water at San 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 matrarca, a strip of board with two small swinging iron handles so set in it that, in swinging back and forth, they hit iron plates. In the time of Lent, when all ringing of bells was forbidden, these were rattled to call the Indians to church. The noise one of them can make when vigorously shaken is astonishing. In crumpled bundles, their stiffened meshes opening out reluctantly, were two curious rush-woven nets which had been used by Indian women fifty years ago in carrying burdens. Similar nets, made of twine, are used by them still. Fastened to a leather strap or band passing around the forehead, they hang down behind far below the waist, and when filled out to their utmost holding capacity are so heavy that the poor creatures bend nearly double beneath them. But the women stand as uncomplainingly as camels while weight after weight is piled in; then slipping the band over their heads, they adjust the huge burden and set off at a trot.