I inquired for my mining companion, W.M.  Stockton who worked with Bennett and myself near Georgetown in 1850, and found he lived near the old mission of San Gabriel nine miles away, whither I walked and found him and family well and glad to see me.  He had jumped an old pear orchard which was not claimed by the Mission Fathers, although it was only three-fourths of a mile away.  The trees were all seedlings and very large, probably 50 or more years old.  Some of the Mission buildings were falling down since they had been abandoned, and the Americans would go to these houses and remove the tile flooring from the porches and from the pillars that supported them.  These tiles were of hard burned clay, in pieces about a foot square, and were very convenient to make fire places and pavements before the doors of their new houses.  Out-side the enclosed orange and fig orchard at this place were some large olive and fig trees, apparently as old as the mission, being a foot or more in diameter and about 50 feet high.  I had never seen olives, and when I saw these trees covered with plenty of fruit about the size of damson plums I took the liberty of tasting it and found it very disagreeable, and wondered of what use such fruit could be.

Mr. Stockton fenced his orchard by setting posts and tying sycamore poles to them to keep the stock away, built an adobe house on the claim and called the property his.  I went to work for him at once, pruning the trees, which improved their appearance, and then turned on a little stream of water which ran through the place, and on down to the mission.  With this treatment the trees did well without cultivation.

I bought one half the stock consisting of some Spanish cows, one yoke of oxen and some horses, worked enough to pay my board, watched the stock and still had plenty of time to ride around over the adjoining country.

When the pears were ripe the Spanish men, women and children eagerly bought them at 25 cents per dozen and some Sundays the receipts for fruit sold would be as high as $100.  That taken to town would bring from $5. to $8. per box, the boxes being a little larger than those in present use.  An Indian woman, widow of a Mr. Reed, claimed a vineyard near the orchard, and laid claim to the whole property, so Stockton gave her $1000 for a quit claim deed.

Near by was a small artificial lake made by a dam of cobble stones, laid in cement across a ravine, which was built perhaps 50 years before, and yet the tracks of a child who had walked across before the cement was dry, were plainly seen.