Old California

THE JOURNEY OF THE FLAME-- Antonio de Fierro Blanco--Houghton Mifflin ($3).

As every loyal Californian knows, everything in California grows to an unusual size. Apparently this magnification is an old Spanish custom or perhaps resides in the nature of the country. California was an old land long before the Americans came, its early history already misty with crepuscular legend. The Journey of the Flame, a book of vigorous old man's talk, full of stout-hearted miracles and boasting, is like a suddenly-discovered window into that earlier age. Not only Californians but anyone wise or lucky enough to read it will delight in this altogether dignified but occasionally joyously incredible narrative.

When Senor Don Juan Obrigon, known as El Colorado because of his flaming hair (an inheritance from his Irish father), was 104 years old, he was finally prevailed upon to recite the story of his life--or rather, one stormy year of it, when as a boy of 12 he journeyed from the tip of Lower California up to San Francisco in the caravan of the Spanish Inspector-General. That was in 1810. He took the journey for his health, having just knifed a local scoundrel with an uncomfortably large number of brothers. It was a long, arduous, dangerous trip, but young Juan had the time of his life. He became immediately devoted to the Inspector-Gen-eral's wife, proud Dona Ysabel, and was given the job of guarding her only son. Dona Ysabel's family motto appealed to him: "We fear no King, nor any devil; only God when He is just."

At La Paz, on the Gulf of California (then called the Vermilion Sea), Juan fraternized with the pearl fishers, swallowed many a fish story. Besides mermaids, these fishermen were in great dread of the ojon, a large, flat fish with a single eye in its back, which had to be treated with excessive politeness or it would start a tornado. Said one of them: "I have come home from a Gulf trip so weak with suppressed rage at enforced politeness to an ojon, that I nearly died before I could pick a fight with some land dawdler or beat my wife about a trifle!" The Admiral of these pearl-fishers took a fancy to Juan, good-naturedly patted his head. "I did not wince, though that downward pat cost me a year's growth, since it shortened my neck. Men said that in moments of excitement the Admiral's love-pats had crippled many a woman; but they still flocked after him." At the missions along the road Juan heard many a tale of famed Father Ugarte, "whose habit it was to seize a wizard in each hand by their long hair, and knock their heads together until they begged humbly for baptism; declaring themselves long Christian by conviction, but kept from the Church by humility. Once baptized, he retained them so near him that they could not safely backslide."

At the end of his journey Juan's adored Dona Ysabel gave him a farewell letter; he could not read it but would let no one else so much as look at it. At the end of his story he says: "I have treasured it all my life, like nothing else I have ever had. There is one grandchild of Heraclio's who seems to me clean inside and out. If she learns to read Spanish well, and at 16 seems to be what she now is, I may trust her to read this letter of Dona Ysabel's to me; though not to touch it."

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