marking off the garden beds, and for lining a sixty-foot well and building a large cistern.
From the northern forests of the state he obtained handhewn redwood which he used for the beams, floors and other interior woodwork, and for the twelve-foot fence about the large garden.
The walls of the house were made from the usual large slabs of sun-dried adobe, made on the spot. They were moulded in frames constructed for making nine or twelve at a time; this frame was laid on a level bit of ground and packed with clay-like mud, into which straw had been tramped by the bare feet of the Indians; when exposure to the sun had caused the shrinking away of the bricks from the wood, the frame was lifted and the slabs left for further drying out.
When I was a child there was a pit below the house, near the river where water could be obtained easily, in which I have watched the mixing of the adobe; I saw the bricks made in small quantities for purposes of repair or the building of a new wall.
The house was built with a two-storied central portion a hundred feet long, with two one-storied wings about one hundred and sixty feet in length, extending toward the river. The ends of these were joined by a high adobe wall in which there was a single gate, its heavy wooden doors being closed at night during its earlier history, but seldom during the later period.
Originally the roofs were flat and roofed in the usual Southern California fashion, first a layer of redwood planks, then a covering of sand or gravel over which was poured hot brea (asphaltum) from
