IN CALIFORNIA 199 



We remember Padre Crespi's ecstasies over the 

 wild roses, and one may safely wager that roses and 

 lilies followed close upon the heels of frijoles and 

 cabbages in those first Franciscan gardens. Such 

 records as I have had access to, however, are very 

 reticent about flowers they naturally cut no figure 

 in the official records and reports; and as for per- 

 sonal letters of the Brothers themselves to friends 

 and relatives at home, there is nothing rarer in the 

 archives of California. Father Engelhardt, the of- 

 ficial historian of the Franciscans in the State, has 

 commented upon this fact as an evidence of the sin- 

 gle-heartedness of their apostolic labor. The char- 

 acter of their flower gardens is nevertheless clearly 

 indicated by the observations of visiting travelers, 

 such as Sir George Simpson, when he stopped for a 

 while at Santa Barbara and marveled at the bloom 

 of jonquils, marigolds, lilies, wallflowers, violets and 

 hollyhocks, even in winter. The blight of Secular- 

 ization, which began to be felt in 1835, was a death- 

 blow to the Mission gardens small and great, and 

 one by one they returned to the dust that gave them. 

 In 1839, according to Hinds, the gardens at Mis- 

 sion San Diego had already fallen into decay. In 

 1846 Fremont reported fertile valleys overgrown 

 with wild mustard, vineyards and orchards neglected 

 and disappearing; but with the rapid influx of im- 



