in land. The saints have defended
us in peace, and it is the will of Heaven that we shall stay here by
ourselves until the Holy Virgin, in answer to our prayers, shall send
us deliverance."

Here was a new revelation. This was an old Spanish Catholic mission,
settled in 1796, called San Ildefonso, which had evidently been
overlooked for nearly forty years, and had quietly slept in an unknown
solitude while the country had been transferred to the United States
from the flag that still idly waved over it. Lost in the fog! Here was
a whole town lost in a fog of years. Empires and dynasties had risen
and fallen; the world had repeatedly been shaken to its centre, and
this people had heeded it not; a great civil war had ravaged the
country to which they now belonged, and they knew not of it; poor
Mexico herself had been torn with dissensions and had been insulted
with an empire, and these peaceful and weary watchers for tidings from
"New Spain" had recked nothing of all these things. All around them the
busy State of California was scarred with the eager pick of
gold-seekers or the shining share of the husbandman; towns and cities
had sprung up where these patriarchs had only known of vast cattle
ranges or sleepy missions of the Roman Catholic Fathers. They knew
nothing of the great city of San Francisco, with its busy marts and
crowded harbor; and thought of its broad bay--if they thought of it at
all--as the lovely shore of Yerba Buena, bounded by bleak hills and
almost unvexed by any keel. The political storms of forty years had
gone hurtless over their heads, and in a certain sort of dreamless
sleep San Ildefonso had still remained true to the red, white, and
green flag that had long since disappeared from every part of the State
save here, where it was still loved and revered as the banner of the
soil.

The social and political framework of the town had been kept up through
all these years. There had been no connection with the fountain of
political power, but the town was ruled by the legally elected
Ayuntamiento, or Common Council, of which the Ancient, Senor Apolonario
Maldonado, was President or Alcade. They were daily looking for advices
from Don Jose Castro, Governor of the loyal province of California; and
so they had been looking daily for forty years. We asked if they had
not heard from any of the prying Yankees who crowd the country. Father
Ignacio--for that was the padre's name--replied: "Yes; five years ag