José — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 JOSE. ings above the ground, while the. upper story on this side was lighted by a series of appropriate windows. The entire structure was built of adode, upon which the seldom recurring rains appeared to have made no impression, and was covered with a flat roof, from the corners of the main wing of which two small howitzers gazed into the world with a persistent menace. The basement of the main building served asa storehouse for utensils and supplies, while the lower part of one of the side wings was used as a granary, and the other as stables and sheds. The upper portion of the main building was tenanted by the proprietor and his family; the side wings by the numerous laborers and domestics. This was Fort iii Gators as it was built some years before by the man whose name it bore and promoted to a most valuable estate—granting that in this solitude, but a degree behind a solitary island in the sea, and surrounded by a horde of wild Indians, there could be a consideration of value. It was now a year ago that the founder died, leaving it asa legacy to an only son. At the same time of McGregor’s demise this son was absent in the then newly discovered gold regions of Cali- fornia, and returned two months after his father’s burial, not with a fortune in his pocket, but with a head full of ingenuity and enterprise, which prom- ised, agreeable to his predictions, a hundredfold enlargement of the former value of the wide-spread estate. He returned home, accompanied by an elderly gentleman, who, from his looks, appeared to be a New Englander. On their arrival they imme- diately a gt to make an Aa RAR of the =A 2S $ ~e 8 (ECOMMICELMOOLLKS (E(0)