SPRING 1823: MACALA y ARNEL obtained Monterey adobe tienda; San Luis Obisbo harbor served Misiones San Luis Obispo, San Miguel + La Purisima

+++  Early in 1823,  the British firm had obtained a spacious adobe to be used as a ‘tienda.’ In July of the same year, the manager hired Indians to erect an adequate warehouse on the company land.  Along the abode-mud roads, which became hard packed in summer, but impassably gummy after rainfall, streamed an increasing number of pack mules and ox-drawn ‘carretas’ laden with tallow and hides.  ++  The shallow harbor at San Luis Obispo somehow served the mission of that name and San Miguel to the northeast, and embarkation could be accomplished at Cojo cove.  But here again, the road from La Purisima was impassible, even for mules, at times during the rainy season.  Due south, at Santa Inez, lay a small open harbor for use only in good weather.  And even Santa Barbara did not offer safe loading facilities in wintertime, although a hard road along the beach made the collection of produce easy from Santa Barbara Mission and San Buenaventura, ten leagues or so to the south.  ++  No one has succeeded better than Richard Dana in describing the sheer physical effort which went into loading hides aboard the company ships in those days.  Of a pickup at Santa Barbara he says, in ‘Two Years Before the Mast:’  ++  ’We passed Point Conception at a flying rate, the wind blowing so that it would have seemed half a gale to us if we had been going the other way and close hauled.  As we drew near the islands of Santa Barbara, it died away a little, but we came-to at our old anchoring ground in less than thirty hours from the time of leaving Monterey [on the American brig "Pilgrim'].  ++  ’Here everything was pretty much as we left it – the large bay without a vessel in it, the surf roaring and rolling in upon the beach, the white Mission, the dark town, and the high treeless mountains. . . .We lay a distance of three miles from the beach, and the town was nearly a mile farther, so that we saw little or nothing of it. . . . .We landed a few goods which were taken away by Indians in large clumsy oxcarts. . . . .A few hides were brought down, which we carried off in the California style.  This we had now got pretty well accustomed to, and hardened to also; for it does require a little hardening, even to the toughest.  +++