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In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, etc. Mountain streams from the neighboring ranges, they had, however, trained into irrigating ditches, and by these cultivated a considerable breadth of land. They said, they had water sufficient to irrigate thousands of acres more, and needed only capital and population to build up a prosperous and thriving community. In old times--
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as a Forty-Niner would say--the Jesuit Fathers had one of their most flourishing Missions here, and their old Mission Church on a plateau back of the town was still standing, though now used chiefly as a school. Dr. O. formerly of the Army, but now married to a señorita and settled at Santa Barbara, escorted us through the town, and afterwards regaled us with wine from his own vineyard, of an excellent brand. He pronounced Santa Barbara, with its fruits and its flowers, a second paradise, the only place fit to live in--where one would about never die--and half persuaded some of us to the same way of thinking. The petroleum wells near there, as yet, had produced but little; but there seemed no doubt of the petroleum being there in large quantities. We had noticed it floating on the sea for miles before reaching Santa Barbara; and, if it issues beneath the sea sufficient for this purpose, it ought to be struck somewhere in that vicinity in paying quantities. The Santa Barbarans by no means despaired of doing this yet, and thus hoped to add another item to their already large and growing products. . At San Pedro, the seaport of Los Angelos, a hundred miles or so farther down the Coast, we put off some four hundred tons of freight, and parted with the bulk of our passengers. Of this place, more hereafter. Thence, past Anaheim, a settlement of German wine-growers, we steamed on down a hundred miles farther, and halted at last at San Diego. A stiff breeze, freshening into a gale, and a rough swell, followed us into San Diego; but once inside the jaws of the harbor, we found the bay almost unruffled, while all outside was wild and threatening. The harbor, indeed, is quite land-locked, and after San Francisco is the finest on the Pacific Coast, below Puget Sound. But a few hundred yards in width at the entrance, it soon spreads out into a broad and handsome bay, one or two miles wide by ten or twelve long, and with a depth of water close in shore sufficient to float the largest vessels. A bold promontory running obliquely into the sea, as all the headlands on this coast do, shelters the harbor perfectly from all north and northwest winds, and contributes much to make San Diego what it is. In the old Mexican times, before the days of '49, San Diego was a leading Mission on the Coast, and the chief seaport of California, whence she shipped wool, hides, etc., and where she received supplies. San Francisco, gushing young metropolis now, was then only sterile Yerba Buena, and practically nowhere.[19] When the rush of miners to California came in '49, San Diego still held her own for awhile, quite courageously. The Panama steamers then touched here in going and coming. A large city was projected, and built--on paper, with
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and the like, quite _in extenso_. But there was no sufficient back country--no mines or agricultural resources to speak of--to support a town, and so in the end San Diego incontinently collapsed. Poor Derby of the engineers, immortal as John Phœnix, flourished here in those days, and afterwards used to say in his own inimitable style, he
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Thanked heaven his lot was not cast in San Diego; it _had_ been, but was sold for taxes! We anchored off the old wharf, then fallen to decay, where in other days the Panama steamers had floated proudly, and after rowing well in were carried ashore on the shoulders of Mexican peons. The U. S. barracks and corral, now empty and without a watchman even, and a score or so of other buildings, were grouped near the landing, constituting New San Diego; but the main town, or Old San Diego, was three miles off up the bay. A rickety old ambulance, once U. S. property, but long since condemned and sold, carried us up to the town, where we spent several hours. Formerly numbering two or three thousand inhabitants, and a pretty stirring place, it now had only about two or three hundred, and was a good illustration of some of California's changes. Its buildings, of course, were all one-story adobe, but partly inhabited, and these were grouped about a squalid, Plaza, that reminded one of Mexico or Spain, rather than the United States. Being the county-seat, of course, it had a court-house and a jail--the one, a tumble-down adobe--the other, literally a cage, made of boiler-iron, six or seven feet square at the farthest. The day we were there three men were brought in, arrested for horse-stealing, or something of the sort; but as the jail would accommodate only two--crowded at that--the judge discharged the third, with an appropriate reprimand. At least, we supposed it
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but as it was in Californicè, and the judge a native, we could make nothing of it. In hot weather, this iron jail-cage must be a miniature tophet; but, no doubt, it remains generally empty. On a hill just back of the town, commanding it and the harbor, were the remains of Fort Stockton, which our Jersey commodore of that name built and garrisoned with his gallant Jack-Tars, during the Mexican war, and held against all comers. Beyond it still, were the ruins of the old Mexican Presidio, with palm and olive trees scattered here and there, but all now desolate and forsaken. The general broken-down, dilapidated,