The King's Highway - Livres de poche

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. La Purisima A/ONG the bare, broken hillsides of San Juan the early rains brought autumn grass that year, and the tragedy of 1812 had not yet come to pass. The changes that had come over the peaceful little valley during the past few years were gradual but sure. The rancherias were larger and more thickly populated, and the flocks and herds that roamed the hills were more numerous and more prosperous than before. The olive groves were older, and bore heavier crops of glistening black fruit. Along the level floor of the valley, the vineyards and orchards spread more widely than in the past, and everywhere the yellow wheat-fields extended farther over the rolling mesas. All through the valley moved swarms of Indians at their work among the groves and vineyards, and in the cloisters resounded the swing and thud of the loom and the clang of the hammer at the forge. The bells in the tower swung over all with benediction still, but in the hearts of Padre Vicente and his brother priestslurked a fear that in the space of a few years had grown from the measure of a mocking dwarf to the stature of a threatening giant. It was the fear of a premature secularization of the Missions. Beside this menace, the terror of Pico Juarez, who still lurked in the hills, harrying the flocks and herds and leading off Indians from the Mission, was like the shadow of a summer cloud. From the first the fathers had known that secularization must come some day. No one doubted that in the fullness of time, secularization would be the fitting outcome of the Mission system. But the fullness of time was not yet, and premature secularization would mean the utter ruin of the whole splendid fabric wrought so tenderly by the devoted hands of the Mission fathers. Desperately the fathers fought against it...