Thus It Was With Us, Nearly All The
Time We Were On The Coast, And Many Of Our Sabbaths Were Lost
Entirely To Us.
The Catholics on shore have no trading and make
no journeys on Sunday, but the American has no national religion,
and likes to show his independence of priestcraft by doing as he
chooses on the Lord's day.
Santa Barbara looked very much as it did when I left it five months
before: the long sand beach, with the heavy rollers, breaking upon
it in a continual roar, and the little town, imbedded on the plain,
girt by its amphitheatre of mountains. Day after day, the sun shone
clear and bright upon the wide bay and the red roofs of the houses;
everything being as still as death, the people really hardly seeming
to earn their sun-light. Daylight actually seemed thrown away upon
them. We had a few visitors, and collected about a hundred hides,
and every night, at sundown, the gig was sent ashore, to wait for
the captain, who spent his evenings in the town. We always took
our monkey-jackets with us, and flint and steel, and made a fire
on the beach with the driftwood and the bushes we pulled from the
neighboring thickets, and lay down by it, on the sand. Sometimes we
would stray up to the town, if the captain was likely to stay late,
and pass the time at some of the houses, in which we were almost
always well received by the inhabitants.
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