Riverside and Finis. 323 



on the shore. It may be his own knowledge that infinity is before him ; but 

 the scene does inform him, in some way, that the infinite is there. The in- 

 coming billows, even when the sea is most calm, are, according to my esti- 

 mates, from ten to twenty feet in perpendicular height. Each wave stretches 

 laterally for miles and miles. The ocean rhythm has its mathematical and 

 musical succession. It has its mighty poetical feet. It has an anapest or a 

 dactyl, an amphibrach or a molossus, according to the mood of the spirit 

 that broods upon the waters. 



" Break, break, break. 



At the foot of thy crags, O sea ; 

 But the tender grace of the day that is dead 



Will never come back to me." 



After delighting ourselves for a while with a free stroll up and down 

 the beach (for the tide was out), we returned across the bay to San Diego, 

 and were favored by the citizens with an excursion through the country. 

 The region round about the city has the same general aspect as that de- 

 scribed above, on our approach from the north. It is a fruitful region. Some 

 of the oldest vinej'^ards and olive orchards in California are found here, and 

 vines are known which were certainly planted by the padres well back in 

 the last century. Out yonder, at the distance of some miles, is the old adobe 

 mission, which was, doubtless, the nucleus of Spanish civilization in this dis- 

 trict. I have never seen a structure which is more difficult to describe than 

 the ruins of one of these ancient mission houses. As you approach across 

 the plain you see in the distance what might be mistaken for the outlines of 

 an abandoned fort. The missions were generally defended by a wall of sun- 

 dried bricks, standing at a distance of ten or twenty rods from the buildings 

 within. The wall is four feet thick at the base, about twelve feet high, slop- 

 ing to the top. Here and there were openings or sally-ports, which I sup- 

 pose to have been closed by heavy wooden gates. In the valley of San Fer- 

 nando I saw some evidences of a kind of portcullis arranged for defense in 

 connection with the wall of the mission. The mission house proper is also 

 adobe, generally two stories in height, and, withal, a rather formidable sort of 

 building. The walls are very thick, the windows and doors small and easily 

 defensible. The roof is constructed of tiles, which must have been burned 

 in a kiln, as they are red. They are of half cylindrical sections, about six 

 inches in diameter and two feet in length. I have no doubt that some of 

 these roofs, undisturbed for a hundred years, still shed the water without a 

 dr©p of leakage. In many places the mission houses have tumbled down. 

 Sometimes the corner or end of the structure has fallen away and the roof 

 caved in. In hardly any localities do the outer walls stand in even tolerable 

 perfection. They have generally sunk to the earth, and are traceable only 

 by the long mole, or agger, which they have left behind them. In a few 

 places, I believe, the missions are still occupied bj' a company of priests, but 

 they are only a shadow and memento of their former estate. It was within 

 these structures that the Hispanio-Mexican civilization of the Pacific coast 



