Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was
the result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and
market garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with
magnificent vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons
at defiance with extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork
and biscuit consuming settlers did not allow their contempt of
Mulrady's occupation to prevent their profiting by this opportunity
for changing their diet. The gold they had taken from the soil
presently began to flow into his pockets in exchange for his more
modest treasures. The little cabin, which barely sheltered his
family--a wife, son, and daughter--was enlarged, extended, and
refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more pretentious house on the
opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced the rudely-split
rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees, the first
evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles of
brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of stone--
melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green, which
made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.
Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was
necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at
great expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency
Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope
beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and
much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don
Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth
was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking
and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and
my fathers, San Diego rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself,
"were content with wells and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its
appointed seasons; the cattle, dumb brutes though they were, knew