DoņA Ramona Was Now The Mother Of
A Large Family, And Wilson Assured Me That If I Would Visit Him
At His Rancho, Near San Luis Obispo, I Should Find Her Still
A Handsome Woman, And Very Glad To See Me.
How we walked the
deck together, hour after hour, talking over the old times, - the
ships, the captains, the crews, the traders on shore, the ladies,
the Missions, the south-easters!
Indeed, where could we stop? He
had sold the Ayacucho in Chili for a vessel of war, and had given up
the sea, and had been for years a ranchero. (I learned from others
that he had become one of the most wealthy and respectable farmers
in the State, and that his rancho was well worth visiting.) Thompson,
he said, hadn't the sailor in him; and he never could laugh enough at
his fiasco in San Diego, and his reception by Bradshaw. Faucon was a
sailor and a navigator. He did not know what had become of George
Marsh (ante, pp. 199-202, 252), except that he left him in Callao;
nor could he tell me anything of handsome Bill Jackson (ante,
p. 86), nor of Captain Nye of the Loriotte. I told him all I
then knew of the ships, the masters, and the officers. I found he
had kept some run of my history, and needed little information.
Old Seņor Noriego of Santa Barbara, he told me, was dead, and Don
Carlos and Don Santiago, but I should find their children there,
now in middle life. Doņa Augustia, he said, I had made famous by
my praises of her beauty and dancing, and I should have from her a
royal reception. She had been a widow, and remarried since, and had
a daughter as handsome as herself. The descendants of Noriego had
taken the ancestral name of De la Guerra, as they were nobles of
Old Spain by birth; and the boy Pablo, who used to make passages
in the Alert, was now Don Pablo de la Guerra, a Senator in the
State Legislature for Santa Barbara County.
The points in the country, too, he noticed, as he passed them,
- Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Point Aņo Nuevo, the opening
to Monterey, which to my disappointment we did not visit.
No; Monterey, the prettiest town on the coast, and its capital
and seat of customs, had got no advantage from the great changes,
was out of the way of commerce and of the travel to the mines and
great rivers, and was not worth stopping at. Point Conception
we passed in the night, a cheery light gleaming over the waters
from its tar light-house, standing on its outermost peak. Point
Conception! That word was enough to recall all our experiences
and dreads of gales, swept decks, topmast carried away, and the
hardships of a coast service in the winter. But Captain Wilson
tells me that the climate has altered; that the southeasters are
no longer the bane of the coast they once were, and that vessels
now anchor inside the kelp at Santa Barbara and San Pedro all the
year round.
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