with arrested breath and realized to the full the
primitive conditions of a country thousands of miles
from the very outposts of Europe, and with never
the sight of a letter that did not come from Spain
or one of her colonies.

"Would that we lived a generation later," she
thought with a heavy sigh. Progress is almost
automatic, and to a land as fertile and desirable as
this the stream must turn in due course. But not
in my time. Not in my time."

She rose and leaned her elbows in the embrasure
of the grille, where Santiago had restored the bars,
and looked out over the fields of grain planted by
the padres, the immense sand dunes beyond that
shut the lovely bay from sight; the hills embracing
the primitive scene in a frowning arc. With all her
imagination it was long before she could picture a
great city covering that immense and almost deserted
space. A pueblo in time, perhaps, for Rezanov had
awakened her mind to the importance of the har-
bor as a port of call. Many more adobe homes
where the sand was not hot and shifting, a few
ships in the bay when Spain had been compelled to
relax her jealous vigilance--or--who knew?--per-
haps!--a flourishing colony when the Russian bear
had devoured the Spanish lion. She knew some-
thing and suspected more of the rottenness and in-
efficiency of Spain, and, were Russia a nation of