Part 12

Twilight had fallen when we reached Del Mar—our objective for the night. Previous experience had taught us that the Stratford Inn was one of the most comfortable and satisfactory in California—with the added attraction of moderate rates. It is a modern building, in Elizabethan style, situated on the hillside fronting the wide sweep of the Pacific. It is surrounded by lawns with flowers and shrubbery in profusion and there is a wide terrace in front with rustic chairs, a capital place to lounge at one's ease and view the sunset ocean. Inside everything is plain and homelike—in fact, "homelike" best describes the greatest charm of Stratford Inn.

After dinner—which was more like a meal in a well-ordered private home than the usual hotel concoction—I inquired about the roads of the vicinity of a young man whose conversation showed him familiar with the country. He readily gave the desired information and, learning that we were tourists from the East, he put the universal first question of a Californian,

"And how do you like the country?"

"Very much, indeed," I rejoined. "In fact, it seems to me that anyone who isn't satisfied with California isn't likely to be thoroughly satisfied any place short of the New Jerusalem."

"And that's too—uncertain," he replied. "California is good enough without taking any chances. In the ten years I've been here I've never had any hankering to return to the East, where I came from."

"But honestly, now," I said, "aren't there some people from the East who get sick of California and are anxious to get back home?"

"Yes," he admitted. "I know of several who said it was too monotonous here—that they were going back to God's country and stay there; but in the course of a year I saw them here again; after one good dose of Eastern winter they came back to California and forever after held their peace. Have you been about Del Mar and up to the top of the hill?" he went on. "No? Then I want you to drive about with me a short time in the morning and let me show you the prettiest seaside town and one of the grandest views in California." He was so sincere that we acquiesced and he said he would be on hand with his car at the appointed hour.

Returning to our rooms, which fronted on the sea, we were soon lulled to sleep by the long, rhythmic wash of the waves on the beach. It would be hard to imagine a lovelier or more inspiring scene than that which greeted us through our open windows on the following morning. An opalescent fog—shot through by the warm rays of the rising sun—hovered over the deep violet ocean; but even as we looked it began to break and scatter, the azure heavens gleamed through, and the sea in the distance took on a deep steely blue, shading into lighter tones nearer the shore, and finally breaking into a long line of snow-white spray. A light rain had fallen in the night and everything was indescribably fresh and invigorating—and the irresistible lure of the out-of-doors, always so strong in California, seemed doubly potent this glorious morning.

We hastened down to breakfast—which proved quite as different from the ordinary hotel meal as the dinner of the evening before—and at the appointed hour our friend appeared with his car. This chance acquaintance proved fortunate—for us, at least—since our guide knew all about the place and most of the people who lived there. Some of these are well known in business, literature, and art circles and, drawn by the charm of Del Mar, spend a good part of their time there. The contour of the site afforded remarkable opportunities for the landscape-gardener, and very successfully has he seized upon them. The hill is cut through the center by a deep erosion; along its edges are numerous shelf-like places which make unique building sites, some of which have already been occupied. Straight lines have been tabooed in laying out the streets, which circle hither and thither among the Torrey pines and eucalyptus trees. The houses and gardens conform to the artistic irregularity of the streets and, altogether, Del Mar, both in charm of natural situation and good judgment in public and private improvements, is quite unique even in California.

But the marvel of Del Mar is the view from the summit of the great hill which towers above the village and which may be reached by a comparatively easy road. I find a description given in a small booklet issued by the Stratford Inn that is genuine literature—in fact, the literary style of the booklet so impressed me that I spoke of it to a Los Angeles friend. "Not strange," said he. "It was written by John S. McGroarty, who is interested in Del Mar." In any event, it is worthy of Mr. McGroarty's facile pen, as is proven by the following description of the scene from Del Mar hill:

"From its pinnacles you can hear the ocean crooning in long, rolling breakers against gleaming shore lines, or see it leap into geysers of spray against majestic headlands for an eye-encompassed distance of forty miles, swelling in from the magic isles of Santa Catalina and San Clemente, and the curtain of the sky far beyond them all. But from the same pinnacles, landward, you shall look down from your very feet into the dream-kissed vale of San Dieguito, serpentined with natural canoe-ways that have crept in from the great waters. And from the San Dieguito meadows there are trails that lead into the valleys of Escondido and San Luis Rey and many other valleys. Eastward are the peaks of the lake-sheltering Cuyamacas and Mt. Palomar. Lift up your vision yet again and you shall behold, all crowned with snow, the hoary heads of old San Antonio, Mount San Bernardino and San Jacinto—the kingly outposts of the royal Sierras. Back of those white serranos is the desert, only fifty miles from where you stand. And it is these two—the desert and the sea—that make Del Mar what it is.

"The Del Mar which the traveler beholds from the car window as the railroad train glides along the beach on that wonderful journey south from San Juan Capistrano, is a vast hill rising from between two estuaries of the ocean, with Encinitas headland to the north and Torrey Pine Point to the south. But one gets no idea at all of what the hill or Del Mar really is by looking up to it from the railway. Its appearance from such a fleeting view would be much the same as the view of many another coast hill; and it would perhaps pass without special notice from the railway traveler were it not for the fact that it is heavily wooded and that a strikingly beautiful and large building in the Elizabethan style of architecture instantly attracts an admiring eye.

"That Del Mar hill is wooded is owing both to the generosity of nature and to the poetic enterprise of the 'boomers' who, in those still remembered days of empire-building, planted the bare spaces to gum, acacia, and other trees. The trees that are indigenous to Del Mar and that have been there for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years are the cypress and the Torrey pine, both of which are favorites with artists and all nature lovers. And they are both rare, the cypress being found hardly anywhere else on the California coast except at Monterey, while the Torrey pine is absolutely unknown on the face of the earth except at Del Mar and La Jolla, a few miles farther south. But there is, besides the scattered Torreys at Del Mar, a whole grove of these five-needled pines—a grove famed among tree-lovers the world over. As to the Elizabethan building, which fastens the traveler's curiosity from his flying window, he is informed that it is an inn called 'The Stratford,' and well named at that. It was designed by the English architect, Austin, who must have put a good deal of heart into his work, for his inn is a thing of beauty. Nor is it just a thing of outward show. You will think of what rare Ben Jonson said as you sit at its plenteous board and slip away into dreamland from its cool, clean beds, with the deep melody of the sea in your ears: 'There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.'"

I would beg pardon of my reader for having quoted so much at length from an advertising booklet were it not that the quotations themselves render it unnecessary. Doubly fortunate is Del Mar, not only in the charms which she possesses, but in having an admirer who can herald them to the world in such pleasing language and imagery.

We are late in leaving Del Mar—we always were on each of our several visits. But the lure of the road on such a glorious day is too strong for even the attractions of Del Mar and its pleasant inn. The purr of the motor and the long white road winding down to the seashore and disappearing in the distant hills is a combination to rouse all the wanderlust in our natures and waving adieu to our kindly hosts we are on the King's Highway again. Occasionally snowy clouds float lazily through the deep azure sky, serving to give variation to the scene; they darken the sun at intervals and the lapis-lazuli blue of the ocean changes to dull silver for a moment. Sunshine and shadow chase each other over the low green hills to the landward and brighten or obscure the distant mountain ranges. Beyond Encinitas, about ten miles from Del Mar, the road follows a magnificent beach. Here the waves have piled up a long ridge of rounded stones, from which a wide stretch of hard sand slopes down to the sea. It is sprinkled with millions of golden particles, giving a peculiarly brilliant effect in the sunlight which may have roused the hopes of more than one early adventurer in his search for El Dorado. The smooth, shining sand tempts us to leave the car by the road to wander up and down the beach, gathering shells and seaweed or watching the long white line of waves creep landward and recede in glittering ripples. Each comes nearer and nearer until one flings its white spray over us and drives us toward the great cobblestone dike stretching along the shore. Near this are myriads of yellow and pink sand-flowers with queer waxen leaves and delicate silken petals. Some day, no doubt, as California's millions increase, this beautiful beach will become a popular resort.

A few miles beyond this we pause in a sheltered canyon and spread our noonday lunch under a vast sprawling sycamore—if I should make a guess at its dimensions I might lay myself open to the charge of exaggeration, which some insinuate is the universal California failing. Out of Oceanside the road soon takes to the highlands again and runs through fields of yellow mustard and purple-pink wild radish blossoms—sad pests, they tell us, for all their glorious color.

Oceanside is a quiet little place with a large hotel down towards the beach, and her El Camino Real has departed from its olden course, for the mission of San Luis lies some four miles inland. Just out of the village we descend a winding grade into a wide green valley, and far to one side under a sheltering hill we catch the gleam of whitewashed walls surmounted by the characteristic mission tower. We soon draw up in front of the building, which has lately been restored—much to its artistic detriment, we are told. This is an almost inevitable result of restoration, it is true, but without restoration it would be impossible to preserve the crumbling fragments of these old adobe structures. San Luis Rey is considered by many good authorities to have been the finest of all the missions in its palmy days—a claim well borne out by the description of Dahant Cilly, a French traveler who visited it in 1827, when it was in the height of its glory. He wrote:

"At last we turned inland and after a jaunt of an hour and a half we found before us, on a piece of rising ground, the superb buildings of Mission San Luis Rey, whose glittering whiteness was flashed back to us by the first rays of the day. At that distance and in the still uncertain light of dawn, this edifice, of a very beautiful model, supported upon its numerous pillars, had the aspect of a palace. The architectural faults can not be grasped at this distance, and the eye is attracted only to the elegant mass of this beautiful structure.... Instinctively I stopped my horse to gaze alone, for a few minutes, on the beauty of the sight.

"This building forms a large square of five hundred feet on each side. The main facade is a long peristyle borne on thirty-two square pillars supporting round arches. The edifice is composed, indeed, of only a ground-floor, but its elevation, of fine proportions, gives it as much grace as nobleness. It is covered with a tile roof, flattened, around which reaches, as much without as within the square, a terrace with an elegant balustrade which stimulates still more the height. Within is seen a large court, neat and levelled, around which pillars and arches similar to those of the peristyle support a long cloister, by which one communicates with all the dependencies of the mission."

We see before us now a huge, dormitory-like building adjoining the ancient church, which is also undergoing repair and restoration—an adobe structure with a beautiful tower which is about the only exterior remnant of the mission's ancient glory. A brown-robed, bare-footed Mexican priest responds to the bell and offers to guide us about the building. He conducts us to the church—a long, narrow apartment with high beamed ceiling, resplendent in the bright colors of the ancient decorations recently restored. The beautiful mortuary chapel—the finest in the whole chain of missions—was still in ruins when we first visited San Luis Rey, but two years later we found it restored in solid concrete. Its artistic beauty was sadly impaired by the improvement, but the preservation of the chapel is assured. We are glad, though, that we saw it when the crumbling remnants were covered with grasses and wall-flowers, and it was still redolent of memories of mission days. The quaint old cross in the cemetery has undergone like treatment, its rough brick foundation having been smoothly coated with cement and decorated with bright red stripes at the corners. About the only part of San Luis still in its original state, save for the destructive effect of time and weather, are the arches of the ancient cloisters, which stand in the enclosure to the rear of the dormitory and keep alive the sentiment always awakened by such memorials.

Our guide told us something of life at the present time in the mission, which is now a training school for monks of the Franciscan order. There are eight brothers in residence who do all the work, each one having some particular trade, our guide being the tailor. They did much of the work of restoration, though, of course, some assistants had to be hired, mainly from the sixty parishioners of the church, most of whom are Indians. For his courtesy we offered him a gratuity, but he declined.

"The brothers must not receive gifts," he said. "I will take you to Father O'Keefe if you wish to give anything to the work."

And so we met the kindly old Irishman who has done so much for the restoration of the California missions. He was of portly stature, unshaven for several days and clad in the brown robes of his order. He came to San Luis Rey in 1902 from Santa Barbara and all the restoration had been done since then. He had raised and expended more than twenty thousand dollars in the work, besides the labor of the monks themselves, who receive no pay.

"I will accept your contribution," said Father O'Keefe, "for this work; the Franciscan fathers take nothing for themselves; and will you write your name in our visitors' book?" I did as requested and Father O'Keefe declared, "That name looks good anywhere—it has a genuine flavor of the Ould Sod about it."

And we fell to talking of the Emerald Isle, which the kindly old priest never expected to see again. He was greatly interested when he learned that we had made a recent motor tour through the hills and vales of the Ould Countrie, which he still loves as a loyal son. He bade us adieu and before departing we paused on the cloistered porch to admire the beauty of the scene before us. The mission overlooks a pleasant green vale shut in on every hand by low hills, through which we caught a fleeting glimpse of the sea. It was a prosperous scene—as it no doubt was in the days of old—with ranch-houses, cattle, and cultivated fields—another instance of the unerring eye of the early monk in choosing a site for his mission home.

San Luis Rey was one of the later foundations, dating from June 13, 1798. From the very start the mission was prosperous. In 1800 there were three hundred and thirty-seven neophytes, and twenty-six years later it had reached its zenith with twenty-eight hundred and sixty-nine. It had then great holdings of live stock and harvested a crop of over twelve thousand bushels of grain. From this time it began to decline and at its secularization in 1834 its net worth was but a fraction of its former wealth. So indignant were the Indians over the decree that, it is recorded, they slaughtered twenty thousand head of cattle to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Mexicans. In 1843 the property was restored to the church, but its spoilation had been accomplished and barely four hundred poverty-stricken Indians remained. In 1847 General Fremont took possession and later the building and site were returned to the church.

Beyond Oceanside there was much fine scenery along the road and everything was at its best on this glorious May afternoon. It was a clear, lucent day, with only a slight purplish haze in the far distance. The sea was as transcendently beautiful as this warm soft southern sea can be in its loveliest mood—a deep, dark, solid blue flecked with purple seaweed and shading to pale green near the shore, upon which the long white line of the breakers swept incessantly. At times we ran at the foot of desert hills covered with cacti and scrub cedars, but relieved from monotony by the orange flame of the poppies. Again we passed through wide meadows starred with wild flowers—the delicate daturas, dahlias, poppies, and a hundred others spangled the hillsides everywhere. Along the beaches gleamed the pink verbenas and yellow sand-flowers. Birds were numerous; the clear, melodious note of the meadow lark and the warble of the mocking bird were heard on every hand. In places we ran along the shore on a headland high above the sea and again we dropped down to a sandy beach. Much of the road was dusty, rough, and poor—sand and adobe that must have been well-nigh impassable in wet weather. Need I say that it has been improved since the new state highway follows the course of El Camino Real south of Los Angeles?

After closely following the beach for many miles the road rounds a huge cliff and turns sharply inland—we saw no more of the ocean. Dana mentions the coast just above the point in "Two Years Before the Mast," as a spot where the ship's people landed to trade with the natives, whose merchandise consisted chiefly of skins and furs. Climbing to the summit of a pass through the hills, we caught a distant glimpse of the crumbling walls and red tiles of another of the old-time retreats of the fathers of St. Francis.

I find in my "Log-Book of a Motor Car," set down on the spot, "Capistrano is really the most picturesque of all the missions we have seen"—a judgment which I am still willing to let stand after having visited every link in the ancient chain. Perhaps this impression is partly due to the fact that the restorer's hand has so far dealt lightly with San Juan Mission and partly because the town of Capistrano itself is so redolent of ancient California. Indeed, this scattered hamlet must have looked very much the same fifty years ago as it does to-day, and as yet it shows little sign of waking from its somnolence and catching step with the rapid march of California's progress. The population is mostly Mexican and half-breed—a dreaming, easy-going community that seems quite content with its humdrum life and obvious poverty. There is a good-sized wooden hotel which in numerous roadside signs makes an earnest bid for the patronage of motorists, and looks as if it might be fairly comfortable for a brief sojourn.

To see Capistrano, the motor which takes you away when you are ready to go, is the means par excellence. The charm of the place is the mission, which you can see to your satisfaction in an hour or two, though you will doubtless desire to come again. It stands at the edge of the village in the luxuriant green valley, guarded by the encircling hills so omnipresent in California. Someone has styled it the Melrose Abbey of the west, but it is quite as different from Melrose Abbey as California is unlike Scotland. We enter the grounds and look about some time for a guide, but find no one save a dark-eyed slip of a girl in a broad sombrero, placing flowers on the altar of the diminutive chapel. She leads us to the quarters of the padre and we hear him chanting a Latin prayer as we approach. He is a tall, dark, ascetic-looking young fellow, who greets us warmly and asks us to step into his study until he is ready to go with us. It is a bare, uncomfortable-looking room, which from the outside we would never have suspected to be occupied. He is Father St. John O'Sullivan, a young Kentuckian of Irish descent and one can soon see that he is at San Juan Capistrano because his heart is in his work. He tells us little of the story of the mission, for he has written a booklet covering that—which we gladly purchase, and also a number of the beautiful photographs which he himself has taken. Like every other mission priest whom we met, his heart is set on the restoration and preservation of his charge and every dollar that he gets by contribution or the sale of his pictures or souvenirs is hoarded for that purpose.

And who can look about the beautiful ruin and not be impressed that his purpose is a worthy one? For here, beyond question, was one of the largest establishments and the finest church of all the twenty-one missions of California. Our pictures must be the best description of the ruin—but they can give little idea of the impressive ensemble. The inner court was surrounded by arched cloisters, part of which still remain, though time-stained to a mellow brown and covered with vines and roses. A tiny garden now relieves the wide waste of the ancient enclosure, fragments of whose walls are still to be seen. The original tiles still cover the roof, giving that rich color combination of dull reds, silver-grays, and moss-greens which one seldom sees elsewhere. The ruins of the great church are the most impressive and melancholy portion—doubly so when one learns that the earthquake of 1812 tumbled the seven stone domes of the roof upon the congregation while at mass, crushing out forty lives. Traces of the carvings and decorations still remain which show that in rude artistic touches Capistrano church surpassed all its compeers. A little nondescript campanile with four bells remains, whose inscriptions and history are given in Father O'Sullivan's "Little Chapters." Here, also, he gives one or two pleasing traditions of the bells, which are worth repeating here: