"Now, I am going," said Juan. He put his hat on his head; he moved his foot in the path.
"Go with God, Don Juan," said she, low, like a benediction. And after that word he could not stay.
There were wonders to be seen in the field of the two palms, where the grey adobe wall ran in line as true as transit could draw it. First of all, there was the wonder of the wall itself, not less than eight feet thick at the bottom, where it stood on a foundation of round stones brought from the river bed, tapering to three feet at the top. It was nine or ten feet high, and enclosed at least two hundred acres. Juan stood at the gate admitting to this fruitful enclosure, struck with astonishment by the evidence of so much labor so unwisely spent.
It seemed as if the padres had expected the mastodons and camels to rise up out of the bismuth pits which held their bones in the valley crossed by the harbor road. Padre Mateo had pointed out the melancholy place where wild creatures of a past age had walked into this viscous lake. The people of the Pueblo de Los Angeles used the material now to make their roofs waterproof. They found the bones of these ancient monsters, immense past belief, sound as the day they had mired and wallowed down to their miserable end. It seemed, indeed, as if the padres had expected these prodigious beasts to come again to the valleys of California and invade their fields.
Hundreds of hands had toiled through many
