liberated from their rule. To the surprise of Alvaredo and his secular friends, the Indians began to perish from the soil the moment they were free.

So long as Fray Jose Maria lingered at San Carlos, his converts clung to him; when he was gone, they scattered to the woods. All efforts to recall them fail. Yet these poor converts have not lost all traces of a better time. San Carlos is their patron saint. Once a year they come to see the Lady of Carmelo, and to celebrate their patron's day. Poor things! They roast an ox-a stolen ox by choice. They gorge all day, and dance all night. Mixing up old and new, they keep the vigil of San Carlos, not with fast and prayer, but feast and revel; ending in such orgies as might better suit an Indian circle than a Christian church.

Each

These rituals will not long survive. season the converts drop in number. Long before these sun-dried bricks have sunk into the earth, all those who helped to build them will have passed into the land of souls.

19

CHAPTER III.

STRANGERS IN THE LAND.

THE ground is almost cleared; cleared of the original and the second growths. What crops will оссиру the soil?

On strolling to the orchard, we find a Portu guese squatter living in a mud hut, under a fruit wall, and in the midst of apple trees.

Fine apples, Señor,' smirks the Portuguese. Just try the flavour of our fruit.'

Though thin and cold, the acid has a grateful taste; but these Spanish apples cannot be compared with the American variety, a fruit which is at once meat and drink, food and medicine; one of the most gracious products of American soil and sunshine.

These trees seem old?'

'Hundreds of years,' rejoins the squatter, with

Iberian fondness for antiquity and Indian ignorance of dates. Yet they are old enough; having outlived the friars who planted them, and the natives for whose benefit they were trained.

'You have a lovely country here about; why is Carmelo left a desert?'

Ah!' the squatter laughs, 'you see the good fathers have been driven away, and these poor devils, whether Redskins or Half-breeds, have now no friends to tell them what to do.'

'Tell them what to do! The soil has not been sent away, nor have the sunshine and the rain been sent away. They have the wood, the river, and the sea. Yon hills are full of ore, yon waters full of fish.'

'Yes, Señor, that is true; but who will find that ore and catch that fish?'

All those who want to eat. Cannot the Redskin scale these heights, cannot the Half-breed plough those seas?'

'No Señor,' sneers the Portuguese; 'no Indian ever wrought a mine, no mixed-blood ever speared a whale. Strangers may hunt for coal and gold, and bring in whale and seal. You'll find some

English miners in that range, some Portuguese whalers in that bay; but you will see no Mexicans, either red or mixed, engaged in hardy work and daring deed.'

'Bad roads down here?' we ask, on gathering up the reins.

'Bad roads! Ah, never mind, Señor. Go on -you'll find them worse-good bye!'

Tearing through scrub and grass, we rattle down the slope in search of a ford; now startling a hawk-owl from his perch, anon drawing up to bang at snipe or teal. We reach the stream that ought to be the Kishon, here a broad and shallow river, rippling over beds of sand, and whispering to an angler of abundant trout. When Capitan Carlos was a buck of sixty, Rio Carmelo fed the mission and the tribe; but now no line is dropped into the flood for trout, no snare is drawn across the ford for duck. All nature at Carmelo runs to waste.

Crossing the ford and climbing up the slopes towards Monte Carmelo, we crash our way through trough and tangle, swarm up ridge and rock, each moment getting deeper in the wood and higher on the range, until we catch, some height above our

heads, an opening in the mountain side. There lie the lodes; there run the seams of coal. Yon cleft, to which no native climbs, conceals a future town, just as this acorn hides a future oak.

Two foreign artists come into these parts. For what? To grow their beards, to bronze their cheeks, to shake the dust of Paris from their feet. A gay Bohemian circle welcomes them to San Francisco; where a man may smoke and laugh, sitting over his cakes and ale, into those mystic hours which brush away the bloom from youthful cheeks. This circle gives them Mont Parnasse; but they are born for higher flights than Mont Parnasse. Donning their Indian pants and jackets, Monsieur Tavernier grasps his sketch-book, Signor Franzeny loads his gun. Each has an eye for nature, and observes her moods with care; noting how sunlight plays with colour in the sea, and how metallic veins add lustre to the earth. Seeking for beauty, they find a seam of coal.

These young adventurers are tapping at the mountain side, assisted by some friends from San Francisco, trusting that the seams will float into their trucks and sheds. If so, a street will