The saintly Fathers deserve unlimited praise for making them accomplish so much and behave as well as they did. Those New Englanders who criticise them as severe in discipline must remember that at the same period our ancestors were persecuting Quakers and burning witches. The beautiful hospitality of these early priests should also be mentioned.
Alfred Robinson described a miracle play which he saw performed at San Diego at Christmas, in 1830, as akin to the miracle plays of mediæval Europe. The actors took the part of Gabriel, Lucifer, shepherds, a hermit, and Bartolo, a lazy vagabond who was the clown and furnished the element of comedy: the whole interspersed with songs and incidents better adapted to the stage than to the church.
CHAPTER IV.
EN ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES.
"Bless me, this is pleasant,
Riding on the rail!"
On the Surf Line from San Diego to Los Angeles, a seventy-mile run along the coast, there is so much to see, admire, and think about, that the time passes rapidly without napping or nodding. Take a chair seat on the left of car—the ocean side—and enjoy the panoramic view from the window: the broad expanse of the Pacific, its long curling breakers, the seals and porpoises tumbling about in clumsy frolics, the graceful gulls circling above them, the picturesque cañons, and the flocks of birds starting from the ground, frightened by our approach. This we watch for more than an hour; then the scene changes, and, leaving the water, we have glimpses of wondrous carpets of wild-flowers, the golden poppy predominant, miles of brilliant green on either hand, peeps at the three missions, the groves at Orange, the town of Santa Ana, and Anaheim, the parent colony, the first of all the irrigated settlements of Southern California, now a wealthy city.
The missions are always interesting. San Juan Capistrano was seriously injured by an earthquake in 1812; the tower was shaken so severely that it toppled over during morning mass, killing thirty of the worshippers, the priests escaping through the sacristy. It was the latest and costliest of the missions. "Its broken olive mill and crumbling dove-cote, and the spacious weed-grown courts and corridors, are pathetic witnesses to the grandeur of the plans and purposes of the founders, and also of the rapidity with which nature effaces the noblest works of human hands."
But San Luis Rey is in good condition, having been restored to something of its original beauty, and recently re-dedicated. The walled enclosures once contained fifty-six acres, six being covered by the sacred edifice, its arched colonnades, and the cloisters, in which the Fathers lived, surrounded by three thousand baptized savages. Mrs. Jeanne C. Carr quotes a stage-driver with whom she talked on the box as saying: "Ye see, ma'am, what them old padders didn't know 'bout findin' work for their subjicks and pervidin' for the saints 'n' angels, not to say therselves, wa'n't wuth knowin'. They carried on all kinds o' bizness. Meat was plenty, keepin' an' vittles was to be had at all the missions an' ranches too, jes' by settin' round. The pastures and hills was alive with horses and cattle, an' hides an' taller was their coin. They cured and stacked the hides, dug holes in stiff ground, an' run the taller into 'em; it kep' sweet until a ship laid up to Capistrano, then that taller turned into gold. They could load up a big ship in a single day, they had so many Indians to help." And he proceeded to tell of his own lucky find: "A lot of that holy taller was lost 'n' fergot, nobuddy knows how many years. One night I went up into the grass beyant the mission to stake out my hosses; an' when I druv the fust stake it went way deawn, like 'twas in soft mud. I jes' yanked it up: half on 't was kivered with grease. The evening was cool, but the day had been brilin', an' now mebbe ye kin guess how I found my taller mine. 'Twas a leetle mouldy on top, but the heft on 't was hard,—a reg'lar bonanzy fer a stage-driver."
It may seem irreverent to introduce this droll fellow in sharp contrast with the beautiful ruin, full of the most cherished memories of old Spain, but reality often gives romance a hard jar. It is pleasant to know that the expelled Franciscan order has just returned to California, and that San Luis Rey is now occupied. It is worth making the trip to San Juan to see the old bells struck, as in former times, by a rope attached to the clapper. They have different tones, and how eloquently they speak to us. These missions along the coast and a line farther inland are the only real ruins that we have in America, and must be preserved, whether as a matter of sentiment or money, and in some way protected from the vandals who think it jolly fun to lug off the old red tiles, or even the stone bowl for holy water—anything they can steal. At San Juan the plaster statues have been disgracefully mutilated by relic-hunters and thoughtless visitors. Eyes have been picked out, noses cut off, fingers carried away, and the altar-cloths everywhere have been slashed at the corners.