Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/462

 few orange-trees, above a hundred years old, in what was once the mission garden, are the only vestiges of former prosperity. The interior of the church contains a few battered old religious paintings, the worst of their kind. It is doubtful if the luxury of really good pictures was ever superadded to the excellent architecture, for which there was a natural instinct. It is a commentary on the popular estimate in which the poor old masters are held, I fear, that I was told by the neighborhood:

"You must see them. They are all Raphaels and Michael Angelos." The village is piquantly foreign. Its single street is composed entirely of white adobe houses. One of them, with a tumbling, red-tiled roof, is so full of holes that it looks as if it had been shelled. All the signs are in Spanish. Here is the zapatero or shoemaker, and here the panaderia, or bakery. The south walls are hung with a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to prepare the favorite condiment. The population are a humble class, who gain their livelihood for the most part by day-labor on the surrounding estates. They are not too poor, however, to retain their taste for festivity still. On the occasion of some notable wedding among them they will manage to mount on horseback, and, surrounding a bridal carriage, driven postilion-fashion, return from the ceremony, at the old mission, whooping and firing pistols in the air, in the most gallant and hilarious fashion.

Near by is the large estate of Sunny Slope, known as one of the most successful instances of the putting in practice of the sanguine theories about the country. It has been acquired, and developed, from very small beginnings. It consists of some nineteen hundred acres of land, most of it in vines and oranges. There is a large wine and brandy making establishment. Eight thousand