But the poem and the romance were not his first efforts toward a peculiarly characteristic Western American literature. His first vision of the literary possibilities of the region had been inspired by Irving, and he wrote in the _Sketch Book_ manner during the greater part of his seventeen years upon the Pacific Coast. Behind the California of the gold and the excitement lay three hundred years of an old Spanish civilization. What Irving had done for the Hudson why could he not do for the Mission lands and the Spanish occupation, "that glorious Indian summer of California history, around which so much poetical haze still lingers--that bland, indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving springs of American conquest"?[42] It was a vision worthy of a Hawthorne. That it possessed him for years and was abandoned with reluctance is evident to one who examines his early work. He voiced it in _The Angelus, Heard at the Mission Dolores, 1868_, in the same volume of the _Overland Monthly_ that contained _The Luck of Roaring Camp_: Borne on the swell of your long waves receding, I touch the further Past-- I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, The sunset dream and last. Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers; The white Presidio; The swart commander in his leathern jerkin, The priest in stole of snow. Once more I see Portata's cross uplifting Above the setting sun; And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting The freighted galleon. It must not be forgotten that his _Legend of Monte del Diablo_, a careful Irvingesque romance, appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ as early as 1863. During the same period he wrote _The Right Eye of the Commander_, _The Legend of Devil's Point_, _The Adventure of Padre Viventio_, and many short pieces, enough, indeed, to make up a volume the size of _The Sketch Book_. Despite its echoes of Irving, it is significant work. Harte was the first to catch sight of a whole vast field of American romance. Again and again he recurs to it in his later poetry and prose; notably in _Concepcion de Arguello_ and its prose version on page 191 of the first volume of the _Overland Monthly_, _A Convert of the Mission_, _The Story of a Mine_, _In the Carquinez Woods_, and in _Gabriel Conroy_, that chaotic book which has in it the materials for the greatest of American romances. Whenever he touches this old Spanish land he throws over it the mellow Washington Irving glow that had so thrilled him in his earlier years, and he writes with power. The Spanish part of _Gabriel Conroy_ is exquisite; its atmosphere is faultless: