WHITE CONQUEST. CHAPTER I. SAN CARLOS. RUINS! A pile of stone, standing in a country of mud-tracks, adobe ranches, and timber-sheds? Yes, broken dome, projecting rafter, crumbling wall, and empty chancel, open to the wind and rain, poetic wrecks of what, in days gone by, have been a cloister and a church. A wide and ragged field, enclosed within a fence of sun-dried bricks, surrounds the fane, marking the sacred precincts with a dark and perishing line. No human form is seen, no human voice is heard. An owl, disturbed in her siesta, lifts her brow and hoots; a lizard hisses through the weeds; a catamount, unused to tramp of horse and bark of dog, deserts her hole and darts into the bush. Near by, the ocean laps in measured tones along a sandy beach. A cry of gulls and cormorants, rising from a rock below the cliff, is answered by a yell of sea-lions, fighting for their mates; but these mysterious voices from the depths of nature seem to feed the silence, and make the solitude complete. Rein up, and scan the scene; a dip in the Pacific coast, between the heights of Monte Toro and the Pinal Grande; a scene to soothe the eye with physical beauty and surprise the ear with sacred and familiar names. A spur runs out from the sierra towards the ocean, covered with pines and oaks, until the ridge breaks over the waters in a frown of rocks. Some Spanish pilgrim called that spur Carmelo Range, the sheltered nook below the bluff Carmelo Bay. The peak in front of Pinal Grande is Monte Carmelo, and the foremost headland on the coast Carmelo Point. North of this sacred spur, but running side by side, a tamer spur drops down from Monte Toro; falling with a gentler slope and clothed in softer woods; a spur on which laurel and madrone take the place of pine and oak. |