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.