I remember the Mission Dolores as a detached settlement with a pronounced Spanish flavor.  There was one street worth mentioning, and only one.  It was lined with low-walled adobe houses, roofed with the red curved tiles which add so much to the adobe houses that otherwise would be far from picturesque.  The adobe is a sun-baked brick; it is mud-color; its walls look as if they were moulded of mud.  The adobes were the native California habitations.  We spoke of them as adobes; although it would probably be as correct, etymologically, to refer to brick houses as bricks.

There were a few ramshackle hotels at the mission; for in the early days it seemed as if everybody either boarded or took in boarders, and many families lived for years in hotels rather than attempt to keep house in the wilds of San Francisco.  The mission was about one house deep each side of the main street.  You might have turned a corner and found yourself face to face with the cattle in the meadow.  As for the goats, they met you at the doorway and followed you down the street like dogs.

At the top of this street stood the mission church and what few mission buildings were left for the use of the Fathers.  The church and the grounds were the most interesting features of the place, and it was a favorite resort of the citizens of San Francisco; yet it most likely would not have been were the church the sole attraction.  Here, in appropriate enclosures, there were bull-fighting, bear-baiting, and horse-racing.  Many duels were fought here, and some of them were so well advertised that they drew almost as well as a cock-fight.  Cock-fighting was a special Sunday diversion.  Through the mission ran the highway to the pleasant city of San Jose; it ran through a country unsurpassed in beauty and fertility.  Above the mission towered the mission peaks, and about it the hillslopes were mantled with myriads of wild flowers, the splendor and variety of which have added to the fame of California.

The mission church was never handsome; but the facade with the old bells hanging in their niches, and the almost naive simplicity of its architectural adornment, are extremely pleasing.  It is a long, narrow, dingy nave one enters.  Its walls of adobe do not retain their coats of whitewash for any length of time; in the rainy season they are damp and almost clammy.  The floor is of beaten earth; the Stations upon the walls of the rudest description; the narrow windows but dimly light the interior, and rather add to than dispel the gloom that has been gathering there for ages.  The high altar is, of course, in striking contrast with all that dark interior:  it is over-decorated in the Mexican manner—­flowers, feathers, tinsel ornaments, tall candlesticks elaborately gilded; all the statues examples of the primitive art that appealed strongly to the uncultivated eye; and all the adornments gay, gaudy, if not garish.  Do you wonder at this?  When you enter the old church at the Mission Dolores you should recall its history, and picture in your imagination the people for whom the mission was established.