TRAVELS IN TIIE CALIFORNI AS. 
99 
clear bright stream, to the sea. It is ten miles in length, two 
miles wide near the ocean, and narrower as it rises among 
the lofty ridges. Rio Cartnelo winds very much ; and in its 
bends are many stately groves, between which lie the for¬ 
saken fields of the mission, overgrown with wild grass and 
brush. Not entirely forsaken, for here and there is found an 
Indian hut, with its tiled roof, mud walls and floor, tenanted, 
but falling to decay. The inmates are the spiritual children 
of the old Padres, who taught them rude agriculture, archi¬ 
tecture, and the Being and worship of God. Since the de¬ 
parture of those good men, the fields have been neglected, 
and the Indians have sunk into vice and degradation. A sad 
thing is it to see the furrow of civilisation turned back; the 
thistle usurping the place of the wheat; rank weeds choking 
the vineyard, and the rose trodden in the dust! But so it is 
in the valley of San Carmelo. The Indians in different sec¬ 
tions were planting small plats of beans and maize. A mule 
and an ox yoked together were used for draught. 
We rode to the water-side to look at the surf. It was a 
glorious sight that heaving up of the Great Deep on the 
land ! The shore was bold and lined with huge buried reefs. 
On these the swells, walls of bending water ten feet in 
height, dashed, broke, roared and died—a sheet of quarrelling 
foam—over the beach for miles around the bay. And as each 
wave retired, that beach of shells reduced to dust by the 
battering sea, sent up its countless hues, from pearly white to 
the richest violet, dancing and trembling over the green lawn 
on which we stood. This bay of San Carmelo is a large 
open bight, so filled with sunken rocks and sand bars, and so 
exposed to the winds from the south-west, as to be useless for 
a harbor. But it is a wild and grand thing to look out upon 
in storm or calm. On the south, rude rocks, old trees and 
desert hillocks bound it. On the north the lofty pines crowd 
down to its billows. On the north-west opens the valley of 
the missions. Over all its blue waters rave the surges, if the 
winds be up ; or if still, in come the great swells, alive with 
