From the northern forests of the state he obtained handhewn redwood which he used for the beams, floors and other interior woodwork, and for the twelve-foot fence about the large garden. The walls of the house were made from the usual large slabs of sun-dried adobe, made on the spot. They were moulded in frames constructed for making nine or twelve at a time; this frame was laid on a level bit of ground and packed with clay-like mud, into which straw had been tramped by the bare feet of the Indians; when exposure to the sun had caused the shrinking away of the bricks from the wood, the frame was lifted and the slabs left for further drying out. When I was a child there was a pit below the house, near the river where water could be obtained easily, in which I have watched the mixing of the adobe; I saw the bricks made in small quantities for purposes of repair or the building of a new wall. The house was built with a two-storied central portion a hundred feet long, with two one-storied wings about one hundred and sixty feet in length, extending toward the river. The ends of these were joined by a high adobe wall in which there was a single gate, its heavy wooden doors being closed at night during its earlier history, but seldom during the later period. Originally the roofs were flat and roofed in the usual Southern California fashion, first a layer of redwood planks, then a covering of sand or gravel over which was poured hot brea (asphaltum) from the open beds beyond Los Angeles. These were the same brea pits in which in recent years the remarkable discoveries of pre-historic animal bones have been made. In the days when my father and uncles first came to California there were many dangerous wild animals still at large, but fortunately the mastodons and sabre-tooth tigers, hyenas and milder camels were all safely put away in brea storage. When the summer sun was hot on the roofs the asphalt grew so soft that we could dig it out with sticks and shape it with our fingers. Such depredations undoubtedly contributed to the unsatisfactoriness of the overhead shelter, but even without our intervention the alternate shrinking and expansion of the substance made the roof more or less like a sieve in winter. Uncle Jotham soon tired of rain inside the house in winter, no matter how much he prayed for it outside, so that very soon after he moved into the adobe he added a good old-fashioned Yankee roof to the main portion of the house. The roofs on the wings did not come until after I had learned the joy of the flat ones. Here we used to go at sunset to wait for the homecoming of the fathers, for whose returning buggies we could watch from this vantage ground. We also could see the whole sunset sky, and the lovely pink lights on far, faint Baldy.