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Updated: May 19, 2025
Along Montgomery Street were the stores of Howard & Mellus, Frank Ward, Sherman & Ruckel, Ross & Co., and it may be one or two others. Around the Plaza were a few houses, among them the City Hotel and the Custom-House, single-story adobes with tiled roofs, and they were by far the most substantial and best houses in the place.
Having safely landed our horses and mules, we picked up and rode to San Rafael Mission, stopping with Don Timoteo Murphy. The next day's journey took us to Bodega, where lived a man named Stephen Smith, who had the only steam saw-mill in California. He had a Peruvian wife, and employed a number of absolutely naked Indians in making adobes.
The pyramids consist of an outer casing of hewn stone, faced and covered with smooth stucco, which has resisted the effects of time and bad usage in a wonderful manner. Inside this casing were adobes, stones, clay, and mortar, as one may see in places where the exterior has been damaged, and by creeping into the small passage which leads into the Temple of the Moon.
Others came in, one by one; and at length, the foot being gathered together in the adobes, and things brought to order outside, the captain led his company into the church. General Walker was still there, talking earnestly with Sanders and Waters, having cleared the church of the fugitives.
The adobes were the native California habitations. We spoke of them as adobes; although it would probably be as correct, etymologically, to refer to brick houses as bricks.
Lima is about two miles long from east to west, and a mile and a quarter broad. The streets are all straight, and about twenty-five feet wide, and there are no less than one hundred and fifty-seven quadras or open spaces. It is enclosed by walls built of adobes, sun-dried bricks made of clay and chopped straw.
Their dwellings of mud bricks, or adobes, were all built upon a single plan, and consisted of a square or rectangular fort-like structure enclosing an open space. Herds of sheep and goats grazed upon the hillsides, while the bottom-lands were planted with corn and barley.
The buildings of the Pueblo, with few exceptions, are constructed of adobes, and none of them have even the smallest pretensions to architectural taste or beauty. The church, which is situated near the centre of the town, exteriorly resembles a huge Dutch barn. The streets are irregular, every man having erected his house in a position most convenient to him.
This it was which had enabled the adobes beneath to endure for years, and perhaps for centuries, in spite of the lapping of rains and the gnawing of winds. On the outermost corner of the structure, overlooking the eddying, foaming bend of the San Juan, rose the isolated tower. It contained a single room, walled with hard-finish and profusely etched with figures in vermilion.
Captain Fisher pointed out to me a house built of adobes, which has been standing between 80 and 90 years, and no house in the place appeared to be more substantial or in better repair. A garrison, composed of marines from the United States' ships, and volunteers enlisted from the American settlers in the country, is now stationed here.
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