ernoon, when, after I had passed an hour or so in the campo santo,
an old Indian slowly appeared and greeted me. He must have been nearly
eighty years old, and he was obliged to use a cane to assist his slow
and faltering steps. Several times during the two days I had seen him,
sitting in the sun on the rough porch of a house close by, or ambling
slowly about, and had been struck with his appearance. Although bent
with his years, he was tall, and, in his younger days, must have had a
graceful, as well as powerful, figure, traces of it remaining still,
in spite of his decrepitude. But his face was the most noticeable thing
about him. Notwithstanding the dimness of age, there was a wonderful
amount of intelligence and animation in his expression, and the deep,
black eyes could hardly have been brighter and more piercing at the age
of forty than they now appeared. His long straight hair was still thick,
but very grey. He wore the ordinary dress of the poor man. He was, in
fine, a specimen of what the missions could do with the Indians when
working on the best material to be found among them.

"Buenos dias, Senor," he said gravely, as he came near.

"Buenos dias."

"Will the Senor be disturbed if I stay here awhile and watch him work?"
he continued in Spanish, which he spoke rather slowly, but with as much
ease and correctness as a Mexican.

I answered I should be glad to have him remain so long as he pleased,
and, in return, after he had seated himself beside me on an old ruined
adobe wall, asked if he had lived long here.

"For over sixty years, Senor."

"And where did you spend your early years, for I think you have seen
many more than sixty?" I asked.

"Si, Senor, I am eighty-one now. Until I was about twenty, I lived at
Mission San Luis Rey, twenty miles from here. Has the Senor 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.

"Senor, 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 mo