Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/399

Once a year, on St. Charles's-day, in early November, a memorial service is held, attended by all the shabby Spanish-Indian life remaining in the country round about. The place is unique. It seems even more lonely than ruins of the same kind in the mother country, through standing amid surroundings of such a different class. Nothing is more conducive to pensiveness of a pleasant kind than, lying within this ruined enclosure, to watch the waving in the wind of the long grasses on its walls and listen to the plash of the sea on the shore, but a few steps distant.