"For over sixty years, Se?–or."
"And where did you spend your early years, for I think you have seen
many more than sixty?" I asked.
"Si, Se?–or, I am eighty-one now. Until I was about twenty, I lived at
Mission San Luis Rey, twenty miles from here. Has the Se?–or ever seen
San Luis Rey?"
I nodded, continuing with my sketch.
"Ah! that was a beautiful mission sixty years ago," the old man said, in
a tone of sad retrospect.
"Tell me about it," I said. "In those days, sixty years ago, the mission
must have been perfect, with no ruins to mar its beauty. And were there
not many neophytes at that time?" I added.
"Se?–or, San Luis Rey was the largest mission in California. So much
larger than this place, although Pala had many more Indians in those
days, before the padres were driven away, that it seemed to me like a
city. There were more than two thousand Indians, and all worked busily
from morning until night, the men plowing and planting in the fields, or
making adobes for building houses, and the women weaving and sewing and
cooking.
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