LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 147 



who could not realise the idea of scalp- taking savages), had 

 arrived with a whole skin at the Mission. There he was 

 received with open arms by his countryman Fray Augustin, 

 who made him welcome to all the place afforded, and there 

 he harmlessly smoked away his time ; his heart far away 

 on the banks of the Genii and in the grape-bearing vegas 

 of his beloved Andalusia, his withered cuerpo in the sierras 

 of Upper California. Don Antonio was the walking essence 

 of a Spaniard of the ancien regime. His family dated 

 from the Flood, and with the exception of sundry refresh- 

 ing jets of Moorish blood, injected into the Truebas during 

 the Moorish epoch, no strange shoot was ever engrafted on 

 their genealogical tree. The marriages of the family were 

 ever confined to the family itself never looking to fresh 

 blood in a station immediately below it, which was not 

 hidalgueno ; nor above, since an} T thing higher in rank than 

 the Trueba y Trueba family, no habia, there was not. 



Thus, in the male and female scions of the house, were 

 plainly visible the ill effects of breeding " in and in." The 

 male Truebas were sadly degenerate Dons, in body as in 

 mind compared to their ancestors of Boabdil's day ; and 

 the senoritas of the name were all eyes, and eyes alone, and 

 hardly of such stamp as would have tempted that amorous 

 monarch to bestow a kingdom for a kiss, as ancient ballads 

 tell. 



"Dueria de la negra toca, 



For un beso de tu boca, 

 Diera un reyno, Boabdil ; 



Y yo por ello, Cristiana, .' , 



Te diera de buena gana 

 Mil cielos, si fueran mil." 



Come of such poor stock, and reared on tobacco-smoke 

 and "gazpacho," Don Antonio would not have shone, even 

 amongst pigmy Mexicans, for physical beauty. Five feet 

 high, a framework of bones covered with a skin of Andalu- 

 sian tint, the Trueba stood erect and stiif in all the con- 

 sciousness of his "sangre regular." His features were 

 handsome, but entirely devoid of flesh, his upper lip was 

 covered with a jet-black mustache mixed with grey, his 



