248 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



mats of thin willow poles, interwoven with strips of 

 rawhide now brittle with age. On this, crosswise 

 again, was a layer of tules: then the sods, closely 

 fitted together, and cemented and surfaced with 

 adobe mud. A similar mortar was used in the walls 

 and pillars. 



In the wide sunny silence the old house made a 

 charming if desolate picture. These structures made 

 of the very earth have preeminently that air of fit- 

 ness to their surroundings that is the first command- 

 ment of taste in building. Hence the peculiar beauty 

 of our California Missions. Simplicity is inherent in 

 the material, for elaboration is impossible in adobe. 

 The low round arch is its highest flight, and the 

 style accords with our gentle coast landscapes al- 

 most as if the building had grown spontaneously 

 from the soil. Though other fashions of architecture 

 are greater, statelier, or more ennobled by genius 

 and imagination, no other is so natural, so coherent, 

 so familiarly pleasing, in a word, so humane. The 

 old Vallecitos station, slowly rounding and crum- 

 bling back to its original earth, seems in the same 

 way suited and almost necessary to its place. 



I would have given a good deal for the power of 

 visualizing the scenes that this old place has wit- 

 nessed. Seventy years is not a long term, and the 

 Warner's Pass stage-road has at no time seen any- 

 thing that could be called a tide of travel: but for 

 grip and interest I fancy that the life lived and the 

 tales told round that old fireplace would hold their 

 own against the best that any Wayside Inn could 

 show. Many of those pioneers, the very last of whom 



