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Updated: May 10, 2025
When we reached the rancho we thought of passing another night there; but the Indians who had gone down to the valley for corn had not returned, and everything was eaten up except beans, which are all very well as accessories to dinner, but our English digestions could not stand living upon them; so we started at once for San Nícolas de los Ranchos.
The Californians put up parts of their ranchos, too, sometimes." "How high did the stakes run?" Evidently this descendant of the Pilgrims had not lost all the sporting blood of his earlier English ancestors. "Often as high as five hundred or a thousand dollars. The largest stake I ever saw change hands was forty-five thousand.
The ranchos of Calabazas, of San Bernardino, and numerous other places on this frontier, presented the same melancholy aspect, the result of the inability of Mexico to protect this portion of territory from the inroads of the savages.
On, on, sleeping at ranchos or missions, meeting hospitality everywhere, avoiding Los Angeles, keeping close to the ponderous ocean, he left civilization behind him at last, and with an Indian guide entered upon that desert of mountain-tops, Baja California. Rapid travelling was not possible here. There were no valleys worthy the name.
With the exception of the Tagno Indians, few survived to tell of that horrid massacre. A few whites only the unhappy father of Catalina among the rest were permitted to escape, and carry their broken fortunes to another settlement. That of San Ildefonso town, Presidio, mission, haciendas, and ranchos in the short space of twelve hours had ceased to exist.
In the daytime the women several of the officers' wives had braved the wilderness found much diversion in riding through the dark forests or along the barren cliffs, attended always by an armed guard. Diego Estenega, the Spanish magnate of the North, whose ranchos adjoined Fort Ross, and who was financially interested in the Russian fur trade, soon became an intimate of the Rotscheff household.
It will be some weeks before the large quantities of corn and flour and other stores you wish can be got together for we must lay a requisition on the fertile Mission ranchos in the valleys and you will exchange these narrow quarters for such poor comfort as my house affords I take no denial. Concha will remain at Juan Moraga's for the present."
Stretches of tule land fertilized by its once regular channel, and dotted by nourishing ranchos, are now cleanly erased. The cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood.
She looked at Dario, and he dug his spurs into his horse's flanks. The representatives of many ranchos, their wives and daughters, awaited the party from Los Quervos. But none pushed his way between Dario and Elena that day. And they both enjoyed the races; they were in a mood to enjoy anything. They became excited and shouted with the rest as the vaqueros flew down the field.
The golden skeleton within the sleeping body of California had not yet been laid bare. But ranchos were lost and won; thousands of cattle would pass to other hands at the next rodeo; many a superbly caparisoned steed would rear and plunge between the spurs of a new master. And caballeros were not the only living pictures of that memorable day of a time for ever gone.
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