IN CALIFORNIA 197 



ery, but they preferred the real thing, if it could be 

 had. 



The Mission gardens were in the main utilitarian. 

 Each establishment had, first of all, its plantation 

 of vegetables, its vineyard and its orchard of fruit 

 trees. Vancouver in the narrative of his visit to 

 California in 1792-3 speaks with enthusiasm of the 

 orchards at the Mission of Santa Clara, which in- 

 cluded peaches, pears and apricots, and records a 

 famous present of twenty mule-loads of garden stuff 

 received by him from the Missionaries at San Buena- 

 ventura. The latter Mission was especially noted 

 for its productive gardens, which the Indians culti- 

 vated mainly in the bottom lands of the Ventura 

 Eiver. Vancouver spent a day there in 1793, and 

 has left a glowing account of what he saw. The 

 gardens, he tells us, "far exceeded anything I had 

 before met in these regions apples, pears, plums, 

 figs, oranges, grapes, peaches and pomegranates, 

 together with the plantain, banana, cocoanut, sugar 

 cane, indigo and a great variety of the necessary 

 and useful kitchen herbs all these . . . separated 

 from the seaside only by two or three fields of corn 

 that were cultivated within a few yards of the surf." 

 Sir George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 who touched at San Buenaventura in 1841, speaks 

 of the fineness of the gardens even then, which was 



