San Pedro

“ My next stage of thirteen leagues brought me to San Pedro, after passing a small village called Payjan. San Pedro is composed of about a hundred and fifty houses, of baxareque, canes cased with clay: it is a parish belonging to the order of Augustin friars, who have a small convent here. The population is composed principally of indians, whose chief occupation is the cultivation of the lands in the valley of the same name, which is watered by the river Pacasmayo, and produces most abundant crops of wheat ”

“ The mission of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles was built on the right bank of the Rio San Pedro, about sixty leagues from Pitic. Nothing can equal the grandeur and originality of its position. Nothing can compare, in wild grandeur and imposing severity, with the majestically terrible landscape which presents itself to the vision, and fills the heart with terror and a melancholy joy, at the sight of the frightful and gloomy rocks which tower over the river like colossal walls and gigantic parapets, apparently formed by some convulsion of nature ”

“ The church of San Pedro is similarly placed at the south-east angle, and at the end of a large open Plaza called the Mercado Grande. It is not a little remarkable that so soon after the enclosure of the city within enormous walls two of the most important of its churches should have been built deliberately just outside them, and exposed to whatever risks their want of defence entailed. In plan and general design San Pedro is very similar indeed to San Vicente. It has a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts of unusual projection, a central lantern, and three apsidal projections to the east. ”

“ There, withal, dwelt Pedro, beloved comrade of Cristoval, and his genial head was silvered for many a long year. And all the children of the valley, when, from Father Tendilla—who gathered his last flock in Xilcala—they had learned about the saints, fixed upon Pedro as the vicar of the Patron Saint of childhood. There, moreover, dwelt the señora, the guardian angel of Pedro. A somewhat surcharged and superheated guardian angel, perhaps, but gradually moderating, under the influence of the repose of the valley, to a mild and kindly warmth. ”

“ We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.
Two days brought us to San Pedro, and two days more (to our no small joy) gave us our last view of that place, which was universally called the hell of California, and seemed designed, in every way, for the wear and tear of sailors. ”

“ After breakfast we left the city walls and came out on the Square of San Pedro, where women were filling their jars at the well in true Oriental fashion, the air vocal with their gossip and laughter. Groups of peasant women had come up from the plains for a holiday, and were sauntering around the square or along the arcades in their gay stuff dresses, the skirts of which were generally drawn over their heads, as if to show the bright facings of another color. ”

“ If a bad name could kill a place, San Pedro was damned. From the hacienda of Padre Solis to Tumbala, every one we met cautioned us against the Indians of San Pedro. Fortunately, however, nearly the whole village had gone to the fête at Tumbala. There was no alcalde, no alguazils; a few Indians were lying about in a state of utter nudity, and when we looked into the huts the women ran away, probably alarmed at seeing men with pantaloons. ”

“ Higher up, on the right shore, lies the drowsy old town of San Pedro, founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, and which is chiefly noticeable as having been at a standstill since that period, although within the past three or four years it has begun to show signs of development, one of which is a project to cut a ship-canal across a narrow reach of sand which separates the lagoon on which the town is built from the river, so as to give passage to Transatlantic vessels.
At San Pedro the steamer emerges from the Parana de las Palmas and enters the main channel of the river. ”

“ Whether there was any occult sympathy in his reflections with the contemplation of their gnarled, twisted, gouty, and knotty limbs, still bearing gracious and goodly fruit, I know not, but it was his private retreat, and under one of the most rheumatic and misshapen trunks there was a rude seat. Here Father Pedro sank, his face toward the mountain wall between him and the invisible sea. The relentless, dry, practical Californian sunlight falling on his face grimly pointed out a night of vigil and suffering. ”

“ Father Pedro's smile was rare. He was not a Las Casas, nor a Junipero Serra, but he had the deep seriousness of all disciples laden with the responsible wording of a gospel not their own. And his smile had an ecclesiastical as well as a human significance, the pleasantest object in his prospect being the fair and curly head of his boy acolyte and chorister, Francisco, which appeared among the vines, and his sweetest pastoral music, the high soprano humming of a chant with which the boy accompanied his gardening. ”

“ San Pedro at Zamora is a vaulted church with horse-shoe arches in the nave, but otherwise Byzantine in style. In the church of Corpus Christi at Segovia the nave is Moorish in style, and the octagonal columns of the nave have capitals with fir cones, as in the well-known Santa Maria la Blanca at Toledo, originally a synagogue. The most remarkable church of all, so far as Moorish style is concerned, is the church of the monastery of Santiago de Peñalva, near Villafranca del Vierzo, built between 931 and 951, and therefore coeval with Cordova. The church is 40 ft. ”

“ In that slight chill, which even in the hottest days in California always invests any shadow cast in that white sunlight, Father Pedro shivered in the corridor. Passing again into the garden, he followed in fancy the wayfaring figure of Francisco, saw the child arrive at the rancho of Don Juan, and with the fateful blindness of all dreamers projected a picture most unlike the reality. He followed the pilgrims even to San Jose, and saw the child deliver the missive which gave the secret of her sex and condition to the Father Superior. ”

“ Their marriage was solemnised and Pedro said that he must perforce sleep in the same room on the first night as the bride and bridegroom. The prince urged that it was impossible, but Pedro remained firm and said that it must be; and he remained armed standing by the window. Far into the night he saw the witch, like a phantom, come in sword in hand in order to behead the princess and the prince. Pedro raised his sword and wrestled with the phantom, but without any such intention he struck the princess's face and drew blood. ”

“ The first view of the interior is very impressive. The entrance most used is that to which the narrow, picturesque, and steep Calle de la Chapineria leads—that of the north transept. The buildings on the east side of the cloister rise on the right hand, and chief among them the fine fifteenth-century chapel of San Pedro, which, in entire contempt of all rules as to orientation, runs north and south, and opens into the aisle of the church by a sumptuous archway. ”

“ When Legaspi completed the conquest of the Philippines in 1565, he sent his flagship, the San Pedro, back to New Spain under command of his grandson, Felipe Salcedo, with orders to survey and chart a practicable route for ships returning from the Islands. The San Pedro sailed from Cebu, June 1, 1565, and took her course east-northeast to the Ladrones, thence northward to latitude thirty-eight, thence sailing eastward, following the Kuroshiwo, the Black Current of Japan, they made a landfall on the coast of California about the latitude of Cape Mendocino. ”

“ And then the acolyte's destiny was sealed by what again appeared to Father Pedro as a direct interposition of Providence. The child developed a voice of such exquisite sweetness and purity that an angel seemed to have strayed into the little choir, and kneeling worshipers below, transported, gazed upwards, half expectant of a heavenly light breaking through the gloom of the raftered ceiling. The fame of the little singer filled the valley of San Carmel; it was a miracle vouchsafed the Mission; Don Jose Peralta remembered, ah yes, to have heard in old Spain of boy choristers with such voices! ”

“ Everything in the shape of a vessel is made in San Pedro, from the huge urns that hold your largest lawn plants to the minute toy that may be covered with a button. Not only vessels, but every thing the{276} Mexican has ever seen he can reproduce in clay, be it horse or man or procession or bull-fight or building, and he will make it as true to life and color and purpose as a photograph. But in San Pedro they do more than that. You can sit for a statue or a bust, six feet or six inches, and the workman will take his clay and produce a likeness your own mother would know. ”

“ The churches of San Vicente, San Pedro, Santo Tomás and San Segundo are, in their main features, Romanesque of the 15th century, although parts of the beautiful San Vicente, and of San Pedro, may be as old as the 12th century. ”

“ Had not he said to Pedro the night before, when the Señor Don Rafael had told them that the General Vicente Gonzales was in El Toro, that for a word he himself would go to him there; and doubtless Pedro had stolen away alone, like the surly fox that he was. But the saints be praised, the road was open to one man as well as another.
“Hush!” said one in a warning tone; “though Pedro may have a fancy for a cleft head or broken bones, must we all cry for the same? Go to thou Pepé! thou art scarce old enough to leave the shade of thy mother’s reboso. ”

“ The west front reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque, and the rude simplicity of its interior—so similar in its mode of construction to the great church at Santiago in the opposite corner of the Peninsula—suggests the probability of its being one of the earliest examples of which Spain can boast.”
From San Pedro we may follow the course of the little river Galligans to the deserted monastery of San Daniel, dating as a building from the eleventh century. ”

“ From Eliza Cook's Journal.
THE CHURCH OF THE VASA D'AGUA. One very hot evening, in the year 1815, the curate of San Pedro, a village distant but a few leagues from Seville, returned very much fatigued to his poor home; his worthy housekeeper, Senora Margarita, about seventy years of age, awaited him. However much any one might have been accustomed to distress and privation among the Spanish peasantry, it was impossible not to be struck with the evidence of poverty in the house of the good priest. ”

“ At the crossing of the transepts is the beautiful but greatly mutilated tomb of Prince Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, by whose untimely death the crown of Spain passed to Austria. Two other tombs of great interest are those of Juan de Avila and Juana Velasquez. Messer Dominco, the Florentine, executed them both.
San Pedro, standing at the east side of the Mercado Grande, is another Romanesque church of great beauty. Over the west door is a fine wheel window. The interior is pure Romanesque and rich in ornament, and the north portal is replete with the same. ”

“ Pedro was gloomy, but he paused to rub the gray nose.
"Ah, my good friend," he said, with feeling, "there is melancholy in thine accent—belike, the echo of a melancholy in thy soul, like that in mine. 'T is but a sorry life: we're agreed in that, and comrades in misery. Thou, a mule, a cook's mule; I, a cook, a one-legged cook; and a panting, surcharged, vociferous Bolio at our heels, following with the pertinacy of doom! But if thou, too, hast doleful thoughts, forbear to voice them, lest I be brought to tears. Now, prithee, lend me thy back. Adiós, Pedrillo. ”

“ The patrole knocked at the door of the San Pedro convent, which was immediately opened. The commanding officer asked to see the vicar-general, and was forthwith conducted into the principal hall, where he found the whole of the order assembled, waiting for him, and ready to depart. Each man had his portmanteau packed with whatever was necessary for a long voyage. In all the other convents of Jesuits similar preparations had been made. The astonishment and vexation of the viceroy may be imagined. He immediately sent off the whole fraternity to Callao, where ships were ready to receive them. ”

“ Don Pedro is approach'd.
[Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, and John the
Bastard.]
Pedro. Good Signior Leonato, are you come to meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
Leon. Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace; for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.
Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly. ”

“ But love sometimes is stronger than will, and so it proved in Pedro’s case. He determined to leave the mission the next day, without a word to any one, and this last evening he had wandered out into the olive orchard near the church. It was the close of a hot summer day, toward the end of June; the sun was just set in the glowing western sky, and all nature seemed to take a breath of relief in the cool evening air. Pedro had been there only a few moments when Apolinaria appeared, approaching from the river beyond the orchard, where she had been to see some of her patients. ”