What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants; to Which is Annexed an Appendix Containing Official Documents and Letters Authenticating the Accounts of the Quantities of Gold Found, with Its Actual Value Ascertained by Chemical Assay; also Late Communications Containing Accounts of the Highest Interest and Importance from the Gold Districts; with a MapBryant, Edwin
History
What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants; to Which is Annexed an Appendix Containing Official Documents and Letters Authenticating the Accounts of the Quantities of Gold Found, with Its Actual Value Ascertained by Chemical Assay; also Late Communications Containing Accounts of the Highest Interest and Importance from the Gold Districts; with a Map
Bryant, Edwin
California -- Description and travel; California -- Gold discoveries; Overland journeys to the Pacific; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
Belonging to the mission are two gardens, inclosed by high adobe walls.
After dinner we visited one of these. The area of the inclosure
contains fifteen or twenty acres of ground, the whole of which was
planted with fruit trees and grape-vines. There are about six hundred
pear trees, and a large number of apple and peach trees, all bearing
fruit in great abundance and in full perfection. The quality of the
pears is excellent, but the apples and peaches are indifferent. The
grapes have been gathered, as I suppose, for I saw none upon the vines,
which appeared healthy and vigorous. The gardens are irrigated with
very little trouble, from large springs which flow from the hills a
short distance above them. Numerous aqueducts, formerly conveying and
distributing water over an extensive tract of land surrounding the
mission, are still visible, but as the land is not now cultivated, they
at present contain no water.
The mission buildings cover fifty acres of ground, perhaps more, and
are all constructed of adobes with tile roofs. Those houses or barracks
which were occupied by the Indian families are built in compact
squares, one story in height. They are generally partitioned into two
rooms, one fronting on the street, the other upon a court or corral in
the rear. The main buildings of the mission are two stories in height,
with wide corridors in front and rear. The walls are massive, and, if
protected from the winter rains, will stand for ages. But if exposed to
the storms by the decay of the projecting roofs, or by leaks in the
main roof, they will soon crumble, or sink into shapeless heaps of mud.
I passed through extensive warehouses and immense rooms, once occupied
for the manufacture of woollen blankets and other articles, with the
rude machinery still standing in them, but unemployed. Filth and
desolation have taken the place of cleanliness and busy life. The
granary was very capacious, and its dimensions were an evidence of the
exuberant fertility of the soil, when properly cultivated under the
superintendence of the _padres_. The calaboose is a miserable dark room
of two apartments, one with a small loop-hole in the wall, the other a
dungeon without light or ventilation. The stocks, and several other
inventions for the punishment of offenders, are still standing in this
prison. I requested permission to examine the interior of the church,
but it was locked up, and no person in the mission was in possession of
the key. Its length I should suppose is from one hundred to one hundred
and twenty feet, and its breadth between thirty and forty, with small
exterior pretensions to architectural ornament or symmetry of
proportions.
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