El Camino Real 189 



Montecito we enter Carpenteria and its slopes. Here a 

 peculiar patch of black ground being ploughed by a 

 Mexican catches the eye of a scientific coacher, who 

 pronounces it the site of an ancient Indian village. The 

 Mexican stops work as the coach slows up, leans 

 upon his plough, and while rolling a cigarette senten- 

 tiously answers the questions thrown at him singly and 

 in pairs. After much solicitation, he finally enters the 

 adobe near at hand and returns with some of the results 

 of his ploughing, ancient relics turned up in former 

 barley seasons : a stone mortar, some abalone shells, 

 the holes stopped with asphaltum, the dishes of the 

 Indians, bits of soapstone with perforations, arrow- 

 heads of flint, and a flute that some ancient had manu- 

 factured from the wing bone of a bird. It is rudely 

 made, and ornamented with bits of pearl from the 

 abalone. Beads of shell and a flint knife complete the 

 treasures of this collection. 



" Who were these people ? " asks some one. 



" No sabe, sefior," puffs the Mexican. 



He might have said that his house was resting on a 

 veritable kitchen-midden, a town-site of the early Cali- 

 fornians, which Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered 

 when he sailed up the Santa Barbara Channel nearly 

 three hundred and fifty years ago. He might have said 

 that the adventurer found this land the site of many 

 villages, where once lived thousands of happy natives. 

 He might have told us that his ancestors were of the 

 party, and that they buried the great captain, Cabrillo, 



