File:Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba (1883) (14779141604).jpg

Identifier: oldmexicoherlost1883bish (find matches)
Title: Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Bishop, William Henry, 1847-1928
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel California -- Description and travel Arizona -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York, Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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rch of San Gabriel. The missiondates from 1761. It was founded, like the other missionsof California, by friars sent out from the college of SanFernando, in the city of Mexico. I recollect well theoriginal San Fernando. It stands on the street whichwas the scene of Cortezs disastrous retreat from thecity, and is marked with an inscription commemoratingthe famous Leap of Alvarado. The Mission of San Gabriel is worthy of its picturesqueorigin. It has the same massiveness, color, and quaint ro-coco details, including the peculiar battlement, or Spanishhorn of dominion. Six old green bronze bells hang in asmany niches together. The fern-like shadows of a lineof pepper-trees print themselves in the sunshine againstthe time-stained wall. No more than the church edificenow remains. Great agricultural establishments con-nected with all these missions were swept away, yearsbefore the American occupation, by edict of the Mexi-can government. Some bits of broken aqueduct, and a LOS ANGELES. 44:1
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442 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. few orange-trees, above a hundred years old, in what wasonce the mission garden, are the only vestiges of formerprosperity. The interior of the church contains a fewbattered old religious paintings, the worst of their kind.It is doubtful if the luxury of really good pictures wasever superadded to the excellent architecture, for whichthere was a natural instinct. It is a commentary on thepopular estimate in which the poor old masters are held,I fear, that I was told by the neighborhood: You TRUst see them. They are all Raphaels andMichael Angelos. The village is piquantly foreign. Its single street iscomposed entirely of white adobe houses. One of them,with a tumbling, red-tiled roof, is so full of holes that itlooks as if it had been shelled. All the signs are inSpanish. Here is the zapatero^ or shoemaker, and herethe panade7ia, or bakery. The south walls are hungwith a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to pre-pare the favorite condiment.

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