The Trout Streams of the Missions 147 



its bat-haunted walls and falling pillars telling 

 little of its former greatness, when the neophytes 

 numbered one thousand five hundred and twenty- 

 two, the live stock twenty thousand, and hun- 

 dreds of adobe buildings and rancherias reached 

 away from it. But the little river, the Santa 

 Ynez, still flows on; and the trout, they rise as 

 they did in the long ago. 



The anglers of Southern California haunt the 

 San Gabriel River, which rises in the snow-fields 

 of San Antonio ten thousand feet in air, and flow y s 

 down through a little cut in the Mission hills 

 which form a branch of the Santiago range. 

 In the Sierra Madre, before it leaves the 

 grim portals of the range, it is in spring, after 

 the rain, a tumultuous stream abounding in deep 

 and swirling pools, sweeping under fragrant bays 

 far up the canon, or under lofty pines and syca- 

 mores; bounding over fern-draped rocks, a queer 

 stream for trout, some might think, or as Hamlet 

 said of the play : " Pleased not the million ; 

 't was caviare to the general." Coming out into 

 the valley it spreads out often to become a wide 

 stream, or again divides to meet where the Rio 

 Honda joins it, and cut, as it has, through the 

 very heart of the Coast Range, and go swirling 

 along to the sea. 



Could such a stream, filled with trout in even 

 its upper reaches, abounding in snipe and other 

 water fowl, have been passed by the padres of 



