Port of San Diego was ‘best in California,’ wrote DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL in a Nov. 27, 1824 letter to John Begg in Lima

+++  Writing from Monterey on July 7, 1823, Hartnell urged him “to get on with the building of the house and if the Padres of San Gabriel wish to have any share in the building, it is but just that they should give you all the assistance in their power.”  ++  Besides carpentry and contracting, cleaning, stretching, and drying hides, stevedoring, and selling at San Pedro, Logan supervised the curing of hides at San Gabriel.  He resembled his employer in being one of ‘el modo corriente’ in getting along with the padres, ‘paisanos,’ and even the Indians, who worked as well for him as for  Hartnell.  ++  San Juan Capistrano Mission lay near the beach, and therefore was free from overland transportation difficulties.  But the harbor proved inadequate, being entirely unsafe for winter shipping.  Inland San Luis Rey sent its produce sometimes to Capistrano, but more often to San Diego.  This port of the southernmost mission was, as Hartnell wrote to Mr. Begg on November 27, 1824, “the best in California; vessels are safe at all times and lay within pistol shot of the shore.”  ++  Plying the California coast from depot to depot during the years of the mission contract, some dozen different ships were consigned to McCulloch, Hartnell and Company.  It was not easy, under most favorable conditions, to stow a brig by taking on a few hundred hides and a few quintals of tallow at each separate inlet, scattered as they were along a five-hundred-mile coast line.  Unfavorable weather or the inopportune arrival of a company ship, before the preceding cargo was complete, drove the manager almost mad.  Hartnell had unending paper work to do, in addition to the physical exertion, because no bookkeeper arrived to help with accounts and inventories.  ++  Answering a frantic plea, Mr. Begg, said unsympathetically, “We are sorry we cannot meet with a person qualified as a Book Keeper and should think that unless your Mr. Hartnell devote his nights to his own amusement that he would have time enough to attend to accounts.”  ++  McCulloch’s residence in Lima resulted in some easing of the situation.  In June 1824 came the ‘Young Tartar,’ a schooner of ninety-five tons, to serve as a coasting vessel and save the expense of sending much larger vessels here and there, up and down the coast, to collect produce.  +++