Memories

Page 14

EQOrRRG ^^

i84-L"-1-884 ^ ^ S. E. A. HIGGINS ♦

TO

Mrs. Lucy Noyes Brinkerhoff These Reminiscences of the Spanish^speaking People and the Early Pioneers are Dedicated by S. E. A. H.

reiace; Professor Henry Chapman Ford, so long associated with the welfare of Santa Barbara, vainly endeavored to have the subject of this sketch preserved to the city as a relic of by-gone times. Wlien he "passed Be yond" he left its likeness in oil. and also re produced the same in his set ot historical etchings. For the facts woven into this narrative 1 am indebted to Mr. Augustine [Agustin] Janssens, who died in January. 1894; to Captain Henry S. Carnes. Miss Cota, Mrs. W. W. Streeter, and others. I have endeavored to be as accurate as possible, but have given the preference to notes fur nished by Mr. Janssens and Captain Carnes. Probably the only sketches of the inter ior and ruins of the Aguirre House, histori cal in both a public and private sense, arc those which I have secured for my readers, through the courtesy of Miss J. Dayton and Mrs. C. W.Lunt. S. E. A. H.

Casa de Aguirre The Aguirre house of Santa Barbara, with its low, flat roof, broad porches, its open court with a blue sky for a canopy, its specious rooms whose deep windows were set with tiny panes of glass and barricad ed externally by heavy wooden shutters, has recently disappeared before the march of modern improvement. The Aguirre house chat faced the broad ocean, with the historic associations of the old world and the new. which should have been preserved as a memorial of ocher days, has been despoiled and de stroyed. There is not an adobe to cell of its chick walls, not a fibre of wood, wrought with such infinite pains, to whis per of the cowering mountains where grew the grand old pines from which were carved, by patient hands, its pillars, cor nices and casements. Not a tithe of its ircscoing. in either dado or frieze, that adorned the walls these many years, is left to speak of the builder or architect. Even the massive stone steps, worn by the incessant tread


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