to
know that the expelled Franciscan order has just returned to California,
and that San Luis Rey is now occupied. It is worth making the trip to
San Juan to see the old bells struck, as in former times, by a rope
attached to the clapper. They have different tones, and how eloquently
they speak to us. These missions along the coast and a line farther
inland are the only real ruins that we have in America, and must be
preserved, whether as a matter of sentiment or money, and in some way
protected from the vandals who think it jolly fun to lug off the old red
tiles, or even the stone bowl for holy water--anything they can steal.
At San Juan the plaster statues have been disgracefully mutilated by
relic-hunters and thoughtless visitors. Eyes have been picked out, noses
cut off, fingers carried away, and the altar-cloths everywhere have been
slashed at the corners.

A society has been formed to try to save them, and one learned and
enthusiastic mission lover proposes to revive the old Camino del Rey, or
King's Highway. "What could not the drive from San Diego to Sonoma be
made if the State once roused herself to make it? Planted and watered
and owned as an illustration of forestry, why should it not also as a
route of pilgrimage rank with that to Canterbury or Cologne on the
Rhine? The Franciscans have given to California a nomenclature which
connects them and us permanently with what was great in their
contemporary history, while we preserve daily upon our lips the names of
the great chiefs of their own order."

But where am I? Those mouldering walls led me into a reverie. Speaking
of "ruins" reminds me of a Frenchman who called on the poet Longfellow
in his old age and explained his visit in this way: "Sare, you 'ave no
ruins in dis country, so I 'ave come to see you."

The cactus hedge around each mission to keep the cattle in, and possibly
the hostile Indians out, must have been effective. We see now and then a
little that has survived. This makes me think of a curious bird I
noticed in my drives at San Diego, the roadrunner, classed with the
cuckoo. It has various names, the chaparral-cock, the ground-cuckoo, the
prairie-cock, paisano, and worst of all, in classic nomenclature, the
_Geococcyx californianus_.

It keeps on the ground most of the time, and can run with such swiftness
that it cannot be easily overtaken by horse and hounds. It has a tail
longer than its body, which it bears erect. It kills beetles, toa