Robinson,
the Agent, in January, 1836, my father describes (pages 300-305),
something more is to be said.
On my visit to Santa Barbara in 1880, I had the privilege of
seeing her. I was much impressed with her graceful carriage, her
face still handsome, though she was then sixty-five years of age,
with her dignity, calm self-possession, and above all with her
true gentility of manner and evidently high character and purpose,
together with a delightful humor, which shone in her eyes. General
Sherman, in a letter as late as 1888, says of her, she ``was the
finest woman it has been my good fortune to know,'' and Bayard
Taylor in El Dorado (Putnam's edition of 1884, page 141) writes,
``she is a woman whose nobility of character, native vigor and
activity of intellect, and above all, whose instinctive
refinement,'' etc.
In 1847, when our officers took possession of California, she, a
Mexican, of the first Mexican family of California, took care of
the first United States officer who died in Monterey, Lieutenant
Colville J. Minor, an enemy to her country, for which service she
received a letter of thanks from the First Military Governor,
dated August 21, 1848.
She died January 21, 1890, at the age of seventy-five.
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