IN CALIFORNIA 195 



prancing like a mettlesome steed in a parade ! But 

 caracol, it seems, only means a snail, and caracoling 

 is but an Anglican exuberance from that slow source. 

 The gardens par excellence of old California were 

 those of the Franciscan Missions before the time of 

 their extinguishing by Mexican secularization some 

 seventy-five or eighty years ago. How lovingly the 

 old-time travelers, starved from long journeys 

 across deserts or by sea, dwelt upon the rare offer- 

 ings of fruits and vegetables that were gratuitously 

 lavished upon them on arrival at some old Mission! 

 "When Don Joseph de Galvez fitted out the famous 

 Holy Expedition of 1769 for the settlement and re- 

 duction of Alta California, he packed with the Mis- 

 sionaries' outfit seeds of all useful plants for the 

 establishing of Mission gardens. Accordingly a be- 

 ginning at horticulture in California was made very 

 promptly upon the founding of the Mission at San 

 Diego in 1769, and subsequently at the other Mis- 

 sions as fast as these were started. It was a slow 

 business, however, in this new land where rain was 

 withheld during six or eight months of the year, to 

 learn what would grow and what would not, and the 

 Missionaries had no recourse but to go to school to 

 man's ancient teacher, experience. Moreover what 

 was found to do at one Mission, might not do at all 

 at another, because of difference of soil or greater 



