yuccas and fan
palms to the right, while down to the road and along the front stretches
a broken hedge of Castilian roses, which we Californians love as the
gift of old Spain, our first good nurse, we must always have a nurse it
seems, England, Spain, Mexico and our present, very dry one--but let us
be content, our majority will come. There is a pretty stream from the
mountains, brought through hollow logs, and two good wells to water the
place, which is green in the hottest summer when all the hills and
meadows are yellow and brown from drought; before it rise slopes of
manzanita, and higher hills covered with redwoods, and then the sharply
cut peak of Tamalpais, from which on clear days we not only may see the
good St. Helena, but alas, as in all the world, Diablo, himself, is in
view, black and barren, though we do sometimes call him San Diablo, as
the old Greeks did the Eumenides, in propitiatory compliment.

Madre Moreno was indeed a strange woman, and feared by the country
people, before whom she lost no opportunity of playing her role of
witch, and she was known by all for her remarkable skill in extracting
the virtues of herbs, and brewing such efficacious drinks that even
Pedirpozzo, the famous physician of the Alameda side, had been willing
to consult with her.

I was about twenty years old at this time and had but recently returned
from the City of Mexico, where I had been graduated in the law, having
also made a thorough study of botany, and was happily and lucratively
employed in collecting specimens of the Californian flora for the old
college, as well as for one in the States, and two in Europe. This
pleasurable employment gave me an income, more than supplying the few
wants of the primitive life at the little rancho, the herds of which
were alone a good source of revenue.

Just beyond my home, to the west, over the first hill, was a ruined
adobe, surrounded by a great number of fig and olive trees; there had
never been any windows in the house, but the arches for the doors were
still standing, where ivy, poison oak and wild honey-suckle hung in
profusion; the cellar, which was quite filled with stones, was overgrown
with Solomon's seal, eschscholtzia and yerba santa, while a white rose
and a shapeless clump of half wild artichokes grew where the garden had
once been, also many flowers, hardly distinguishable from the weeds,
having lost all they had ever gained by cultivation; a winding bed of
ranuncu