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Our horses straying, it was twelve o'clock on the 5th before we found them. The rain had fallen steadily and heavily all night, and during the forenoon, and was pouring down when we started. We passed through the mission of San Luis Obispo just before sunset, intending to halt at a rancho about three miles distant in a canada.
It is carried on by an organized society formed on the basis of a club and has, we were told, over one hundred members. The Casino occupies a fine building, fronting Obispo Street, and close to the parks. It supports a free school for teaching the English and French languages and drawing.
The beautiful bare hills encircling San Luis Obispo were black in the silvered night, but the moon made the town light as day. The owls were hooting on the roof of the mission; Eulogia could see them flap their wings. A few Indians were still moving among the dark huts outside the walls, and within, the padre walked among his olive trees. Beyond the walls the town was still awake.
As soon as he was well enough to get about again, he joined Roger in a turkey hunt, and started the next day for the city. He returned with surprising news. The white men had marched from the coast through Naulinco and the Pass of Obispo. They had been everywhere well received by the natives, who all belonged to the Totonac tribe.
These were Juan B. Alvarado for San Luis Obispo, José Castro for San Miguel, Antonio Castro for San Antonio, Tiburcio Castro for Soledad, Juan Higuera for San Juan Bautista, Sebastian Rodriguez for Santa Cruz, and Manuel Crespo for San Carlos.
During half the year this was the place where people crossing the Isthmus changed from boat to mule-back, but during the other half Cruces, six miles above, was the junction. Above Gorgona about two miles the Chagres River, whose course had mainly been east and west, turned sharply to the left, while a fork called the Obispo River continued on toward the Pacific.
It was followed by the capture of young Reyes Feliz, Rosita's brother, who was hanged in Los Angeles; and shortly afterward Murieta led his whole company northward into the oak-dotted hills back of San Luis Obispo where they lost twenty men among them Claudio the expert spy in a day-long battle with a posse of ranchers whom they had sought to ambush.
Shamefacedly the elder Garcia explained his inhospitable reception of the travelers. "We hear the gringos are coming to kill us and take our farms. Everybody is badly frightened. We are driving our herds away and hiding what we can. Yesterday at the big Obispo ranch our people shot two Americans and burned some of their houses.
Another Mission was on this road, Santa Ynez, situated in a beautiful place but apparently in decay, for the men had gone to the mines, leaving the Indians, women, and dogs as in other places. San Luis Obispo was another Mission similarly inhabited, but the surroundings did not seem so pleasant as those we had seen before, although it bore signs that considerable had been done.
He was leaving no stone unturned for the elimination of the local liquor traffic. Returning to San Luis Obispo for a brief stay, I was much gratified in renewing the acquaintance of Dr. Bulgin, a successful evangelist, with whom, in various places, I have had the pleasure of being more or less associated in the work.
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