Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/447

 Rh brick and stone, but are wooden roofs, such as are put out by our corner grocers, on light wooden posts. Here and there only the battered skeletons remain, attached to ruinous houses. Most California municipalities have borrowed something of this Spanish idea. At Sacramento, the thriving but flat and unattractive capital of the State, you can walk nearly all over the business part of town under cover.

There is a very respectable-looking restaurant a vine-embowered cottage opposite the Pico House, where the familiar tortillas, or pancakes, and frijoles, or stewed beans, may be had. Along-side is an adobe church, quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of further interest. From its belfry the chimes jangle loudly several times a day in familiar Mexican fashion. Out of Sonora emerges, on the 16th of September, the Juarez Guard, which escorts a triumphal car bearing the national colors of red, white, and green, and, aided by a cortége of dark little maidens, in white muslin and slippers, proceeds to celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mexican independence. This people, who have gone so much to the wall, wear no very pathetic aspect in their adversity. They are for the most part engaged in coarse labor, are improvident, and apparently contented. It is only rarely that a Spanish name a—Pacheco, a Sepulveda, or Estudillo—rises into prominence in the public affairs of the State of which they were once owners. Old Don Pio Pico, the last of the Spanish Governors, resides here, impoverished, in a little cottage, in sight of property of great value which was formerly his, and of the plaza once the centre of his authority.

Don Pio is one of the picturesque features of Los Angeles, and with his history would be esteemed interesting