The Days of a Man 1892 



doors. The Eastern habit of roasting one's self all winter 

 long is unknown here, and the old Californian seldom built a 

 fire for the sake of warmth. If cold, he went out of doors. 

 The house was a place for storing food and keeping one's be- 

 longings from the wet; to hide in it from the weather was to 

 abuse its normal function. 



The The goal of many of our less arduous excursions 



Missions was one or ano ther of the old Franciscan Missions. 

 These form a chain strung coastwise from San 

 Diego to Sonoma, a distance of nearly 700 miles, 

 each link about 40 miles long that is, a day's 

 journey on horseback. And the Fathers had a 

 keen eye for good land with picturesque outlooks; 

 so wherever you find a rich, warm valley filled in 

 summer with soft, blue haze, hemmed in by wooded 

 hills and opening westward to the sea, some old 

 Mission stands not far away. 



San Diego The oldest of the series, San Diego de Alcala, 

 founded by Padre Junipero Serra in 1777, lies in a 

 sheltered valley of the San Dieguito River, over be- 

 hind the mesa ("table") east of the town. The 

 original structure, however, was burned by the un- 

 redeemed, the Indians of that region being peculiarly 

 refractory. The present ancient building is there- 

 fore not the oldest in the state, as the Presidio 

 Chapel at Monterey is of earlier date. 



s a n Second in the chain, on an open plain by the side 



Luis Rey o f a clear stream, dry of course in summer, stands 

 San Luis Rey de Francia, architecturally one of the 

 most beautiful and picturesque of them all. Being 

 there through the middle of the day, we presented 

 ourselves for luncheon at the adjacent old Spanish 

 Rancho Guajome, with a hacienda consisting of 

 several small stone cottages around a square patio 

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