mate can be, and Mrs. Stevenson often said that if the world
ever learned of the magic healing in that country there would be a
great rush to the peninsula, so long despised as a hopeless desert.

[Footnote 72: _Sausal_ (pronounced sowsal) is a Spanish
word meaning willow grove.]

There was only a little cottage of a very humble sort on the ranch and
supplies were hard to get, but she loved it and was never better in
health than when she was at Sausal. At this time she returned to San
Francisco, but the following winter she went back to take possession
and spent some time there. Writing to Mr. Charles Scribner, she says:
"I am living in a sweet lost spot known as the Rancho El Sausal, some
six miles from Ensenada in Lower California. If I had no family I
should stop here forever; except for the birds, and the sea, and the
wind, it is so heavenly quiet, and I so love peace." Running through
the place was a little stream, the banks of which were thick with the
scarlet "Christmas berry," so well known in the woods of Upper
California; multitudes of birds--canaries, linnets, larks,
mocking-birds--all sang together outside the door in an amazing
chorus; and on the beach near by the sea beat its soft rhythmic
measure.

They were very close to nature at Sausal, but though its situation was
so isolated they had no fear, for the penalties for any sort of crime
were terrific. Burglary, or even house-breaking, were punished with
death, and one could hardly frown at another without going to prison
for it. Sometimes they were surprised by the sudden appearance of a
man, tired and dusty, dashing up on a foam-covered horse and asking
for food. To such an unfortunate they always gave meat and drink, and
when the _rurales_[73] presently galloped up and demanded to know
whether they had seen an escaped prisoner they swallowed their
conscientious scruples and answered "No!" Personally they met with
nothing but the most punctilious courtesy from the Mexican officials.
When Mrs. Stevenson received a Christmas box from her daughter, the
chivalric _comandante_ at Ensenada, in order to make sure that she
should have it in time, sent it out to Sausal magnificently conducted
by three mounted policemen.

[Footnote 73: Mexican mounted police.]

When she left this peaceful spot in the spring of 1906 to return to
San Francisco she little thought that she was moving towards one of
the most dramatic inci