When we reach San Buenaventura, the next mission on our route, we find
priests and Indians exceedingly busy, for word has come from Monterey
that a Yankee trading vessel will soon sail for the south, and cattle
must be killed and the fat rendered into tallow for the market. As hides
and tallow are about the only commodities the padres have for sale, this
is an important event. Indians tend the caldrons of bubbling grease, and
keep up the fires under the kettles. When the tallow is slightly cooled,
they pour it into sacks made from the skins of animals. These, when
filled with the hardened tallow, look as though each again held a plump
beast.
Traveling up the coast we come one afternoon to
A golden bay 'neath soft blue skies
Where on a hillside creamy rise
The mission towers whose patron saint
Is Barbara--with legend quaint.
Here spring is merging into summer, and we are in time to see the
ceremony which closes the wheat harvest. The workmen gather the last
four sheaves from the field, and, fastening them in the form of a cross,
carry them, followed by a long procession of dusky reapers, up the
ascent to the church.
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