CHAPTER XII 



THE TROUT OF LOS LAURELLES 



LL roads should lead to Los Laurelles, but for 



some reason best known to the good padres of 



old, the real California pioneers, who blazed 



trails along the Coast Range as far as the Santa 



Lucia, and beyond, they do not. 



One might arrive by sea, landing in the surf at Carmel, 

 or walk in over, or through the Sierra Gabilan, or Corral de 

 Tierra, from Salinas, but we preferred to find it by follow- 

 ing El Camino Real — the King's Highway — over which 

 Junipero Serra and his band of faithful followers walked 

 and prayed, consecrating missions in the cause of Christian- 

 ity, and discovering new lands, not to speak of trout streams, 

 for the king. You can now follow this trail in a general 

 way by train from San Diego along shore, passing some of 

 the most attractive of the old missions or their ruins, as San 

 Luis Rey, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Barbara, La Puris- 

 sima Concepcion, Santa Inez, to San Luis Obispo, San 

 Miguel, Nuestra Sehora de la Soledad, as far as San Carlos 

 Borromeo, in Carmelo. 



Surely these old padres, philosophical and reverent men, 

 were anglers. They had precedent of no mean order in good 

 men of old who were " brothers of the angle " ; and is not 

 St. Zeno the titulary protector of the fly caster, the lover of 

 quiet rivers, where one may reflect and enjoy the best that 

 nature has to give ? So, in some way, the missions and their 

 good builders are associated in my mind with trout, purling 

 streams, ripples, shallows, crystal water over clear clean peb- 

 bles, deep shadows, valleys of live oak and madrono, and 

 angling. 



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