The eruption continued all night, and as there appeared no evidence that it would be likely soon to abate we hoisted anchor and sailed for California on the following morning.
CHAPTER XIV. CALIFORNIA IN EARLY TIMES.
We had succeeded much better than we had anticipated in making our own repairs, so that our object in making for the port of Santa Barbara was more to obtain fresh water and provisions than anything else.
Our passage to this little port was attended by some rough weather, but on the whole we had not much to complain of throughout our entire Pacific Ocean experience. We made two prizes on the way. One of them was a British brig from the Columbia River of tolerable value; the other was a rich whaler from Acapulco, on her way to the northern whale-fields, but already half-full of excellent sperm; and we also captured a schooner, but as she had nothing in her hold but ballast we permitted her to pursue the even tenor of her way—not thinking her of sufficient value to warrant our depleting our company by another prize-crew.
We arrived at Santa Barbara in the early part of January—just at the close of the rainy season, and came to anchor close under the town, for the harbor is deep.
California in the time of which I treat was far different from now. With the exception of a few Mexican settlements along and near the coast, it was nothing but wilderness. There was probably not a house where the present fine and populous city of San Francisco stands, and very few settlements in that neighborhood of the coast—the northern part of which was but little known.
Santa Barbara was nothing but a collection of fifty or sixty adobe houses, with a larger structure called (I could never understand why) the Fort, in which the Mexican commandant of the place made his residence. The coast range of the Rocky Mountains comes down close to the water here and, back of the town, we could see lofty peaks uplift themselves grandly (though not so lofty as in the case of Valparaiso), some of them covered with perpetual snow. But their lower slopes are fertile and sunny, and the natives had done a good deal in the raising of vineyards upon them—terracing the steeps to prevent the soil from washing down by the rains or the melting of the snows above.
Ships very seldom made a port of entry of Santa Barbara in those days, and the arrival of the Queer Fish was quite an event among the inhabitants, who treated us with uniform kindness.
As with the other inhabitants of Spanish America, hospitality is a ruling and virtuous feature of the poor, ignorant Mexicans. Long after the time I speak of, I traveled much among them, and was ever received with the open arms of hospitable friendliness by even the most ignorant and indigent among them.