Acre might have been spared by the industrious hand of the whitewasher,
when the zeal for "cleaning up" seized upon the village fathers of San
Gabriel.



San Fernando

The Buried Treasure of Sim'



The idea of finding buried treasure has always exercised what seems to
me an unreasonable charm over people's minds: unreasonable, not, of
course, that there would not be charm in finding it, but because of the
disparity between the amount of attention that has been spent on the
quest and the real prospect, usually, of success. Treasure islands,
treasure ships, treasure graves, and many other such possibilities have
been many times exploited, both in fact and in story; so it is not
surprising that the California Missions should also have had their vogue
as a supposed Tom Tiddler's ground. And as a matter of fact, a good many
of the buildings show plain traces of the ravages of pick and shovel,
sometimes wielded boldly by parties of declared prospectors, but more
often in secret by knights of the dark lantern.

Why it should be supposed that riches were buried in these places is not
clear; but somehow the idea seems to arise automatically in connection
with old or ruined buildings. A recent writer remarks that "The foolish
notion that the Fathers had unlimited wealth, nay, gold or silver mines,
which they concealed, was common among the Mexicans of that day, and it