Then came that day when we arrived at the little village which is
called the Mission of San José, and although everything about us was
strange, we said to ourselves that at last we had come to our new home,
for it was near that place our fathers intended to buy land.
The village of San José must at one time have had many hundred
inhabitants; but when we arrived it was little better than a ruin. The
houses, built of sun-dried bricks, were without roofs and crumbling
slowly away, all of which appeared the more pitiful because of the
well-kept church and the fortlike two-story house where lived the
priests. Both buildings were in such good repair that they afforded a
striking contrast to the tumble-down dwellings which could be seen near
at hand.
[Illustration]
I would love to tell how father built for himself a house on land which
he bought from the priests of the Mission, and how mother and I set
about making a home which should be somewhat the same in appearance as
the one we had left in Pike County, but it is not for me to do so.