beginning success crowned the Fathers' experiments. The Indians were taught to irrigate, the crops were plentiful and the Missions prospered. The Spanish landowners were made to realize that the farmer who irrigates never has to think of drought, and still can always keep his water supply under his control. The water eradicated such pests as grasshoppers and squirrels, as well as fertilizing and renovating the soil.

When the Missions passed away, the Americans learned the lesson. Many of the Southern California towns were built up in the large irrigated districts because of the facilities offered for agricultural and horticultural production. Riverside, the centre of the State orange industry, is an example of this growth. In 1872 there was no settlement where the town now stands, and the whole country was a barren waste. Irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley has meant fortunes to the growers of alfalfa, wheat and fruit. The citrus industry owes its wonderful vitality to the development of irrigation.

Before leaving the subject of water supply, let me quote Father Zephyrin Engelhardt in regard to important work done by the Santa Barbara Mission: "The fountain in front (of the present Mission building) arose in 1808. It furnished the water for the great basin just below, which served for the general laundry purposes of the Indian village. The water was led through earthern pipes from the reservoir north of the church, which to this day furnishes Santa Barbara with water. It was built in 1806. To obtain the precious liquid from the mountains, a very strong dam was built across 'Pedragoss' creek, about two miles back of the Mission. It is still in good condition."

Viticulture is one of the greatest industries of California, and has been the source of immense wealth to the State. The following poem by Charles Greene in The Overland Monthly, 1897, gives a happily worded description of the coming of the Mission grape:

'Tis said that the good old Fathers
Who sought this Western Coast,
Bearing o'er ocean and desert
The consecrated Host,

Feared not so much lest hunger
Of the body drive them back,
As that wine and oil and wafer
The sacrament should lack.

So they brought the vine and olive
And saved the seeding grain.
And set them round the Missions
Far from their sunny Spain.

And California fears not

For storm or hostile fleet;
For Mission grape and olive

Still grow amid the wheat.10

The mother of California vines, the Mission grapevine at San Gabriel, was brought from Spain in 1798 in a gallant threestoried galleon, which landed it at the wharf of San Gabriel. Later grapevines were planted by the Padres in Southern California and were viniferous. This species almost without exception was found to thrive, and since that time viniferous grapes have been grown in Califorina for various commercial purposes. The Mission grape is a very hardy one, black and of delicious flavor. The growth of this industry has been enormous.

At the time the great Serra headed with Galvez the land expedition from La Paz that was to result in the settlement at San Diego, a second land party was sent out in advance to pick up cattle and sheep at Loreto to stock the new colony. By 1834, the year of the secularization of the Missions, there were four hundred and twenty-three thousand head of meat cattle on the Mission property. The entire trade in California during the Spanish era consisted in hides of cattle, tallow and other skins. The first two products were controlled almost wholly by the Mission establishments. During the rule of the Padres the vast area of fertile land in the southern coast countries stretching from the seashore to the mountains was absorbed for cattle ranges, and almost the sole occupation of its inhabitants was cattle raising. To-day stock raising is carried on in the coast counties from Point Conception, north for four hundred miles, and in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. Thus the chief industry in Mission days still flourishes, and the State boasts some of the largest stock and dairy farms in the world.

It is interesting to trace the development of sheep raising in California, which is to-day one of the largest wool-growing States in the Union. Mary Austin tells us in The Flock that Rivera y Moncada brought the first sheep to California from Velicata in the year of the discovery of Monterey. He took with him 10 The Overland Monthly, January, 1897, p. 24.

twenty soldiers, and was delegated by Serra to bring the flocks to San Diego. "No doubt they at San Diego were glad when they heard the roll of bells and the blether of the flock."11 Under the careful watching of the Padres, the sheep industry prospered. At the time of secularization, they had increased to three hundred and twenty thousand. Although the wool was poor and not very thick, blankets were woven, shapes were made, and also a coarse kind of cloth called Yerga, which served as garments for the Indians. Deprived of the careful Padres, the number of sheep had fallen off to thirty-one thousand six hundred in 1842. New flocks were imported from Mexico to supply the demands for coarse mutton, but it was a declining industry, until the rush westward in the pioneer days of the fifties brought men who were experienced hands at sheep raising.

The first orange trees in this State were grown at San Gabriel Mission at the beginning of the last century. Later a few were planted at each of the other Southern California Missions and in the gardens of the wealthy Spanish families, never, however, for exportation.12 It was, however, from the two Washington navel orange trees brought from the Governmental Experimental Station at Washington, that the great part of the present citrus industry has developed.

The Franciscans brought the prickly pear from Baja California and utilized it for fencing, for canals and food; while the leaves chopped and bruised were added to whitewash, much as is to-day advocated by Luther Burbank. There are remnants to-day of the old cactus hedge at San Gabriel, planted by Padre Zabridea, which inclosed hundreds of acres of vineyards and garden. The hedge served both as protection and food, for the Indians were very fond of the prickly pear. The spineless cactus of Burbank is the modern evolution from Baja California's prickly product.

In the old town of San Diego overlooking the valley, Father Serra established his first Mission. Below the Mission at the foot of the hill he caused to be planted the first palm trees in California. These trees are now many years beyond the century mark, and are known as the famous Mission palms. Lemons, figs and pears were first grown at the Southern California Missions. The old olive orchard around San Diego Mission is still bearing. The Mission olives were planted in 1791, and to-day the production of pure olive oil is a leading industry.

"The Flock, p. 7.

"History of Los Angeles, by Charles D. Willard, p. 165.

Everywhere the Missions were established, the Fathers evolved flourishing agricultural communities from what had been wildernesses inhabited by the lowest of degraded savages. By the faithful performance and marvelous accomplishment of this task, they established civilization in this State, and prepared it for its great destiny. In a recent article on the San Diego Exposition, the following significant statement was made: "The whole agricultural wealth of the West sprang from the seed he (Serra) planted."

It is a fact not generally known that a full record of births, deaths and marriages was kept throughout California at the Missions twenty years before the first census of the United States. The Mission statistics are an invaluable index to the history and early industrial life of this State, and were always most accurately kept. It is to these records that Bancroft, Hittell and others are indebted for what they have written of California's history.

The one aim, object and purpose of the Franciscans was to convert the Indians. This end they never lost sight of, and the neophytes were taught to lead happy, useful lives only that they might devote themselves to the service of God. The religious influence was the dominating idea of the community. Let us see what traces of this influence are to be observed in the forlorn remnants of the Indian race of to-day. In 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson attended Mass at Mission Carmel. He describes the handful of poor Indians who came down from the mountains with old chant books handed down from many generations, and how strangely touching it was to hear them sing to the Gregorian music. "It was then not only the worship of God, nor an act by which they recalled and commemorated better days, but was besides an exercise of culture where all that they knew of art and letters was united and expressed." 13 These Mission chant books are sometimes found preserved in Indian huts of to-day, stirring reminders of the Golden Age of the Padres. The contrast between the condition of the Indian then and now is unspeakably pathetic.

Bryan Clinch says: "Compared with the fate of the uncivilized native population under American rule, that of the surviving ex-mission Indians indicates that the training of the Franciscans had a permanent efficiency on their customs long after their teachers had passed away......the moral and industrial lessons of Peyri and Duran have left them widely different from the naked savages who butchered Jayme at San Diego. Mr. Lummis, after 13 Chapter, The Old Pacific Capital" in Across the Plains.

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long experience, declares that if these Indians were given barely half the quantity of passable land that would maintain a hardworking New England farmer, they would easily maintain themselves." 14

And what would have pleased the great Serra best of all, the descendants of his Indians still cling to the religion to whose services he gave his life, and it still gives joy and comfort to their dreary futureless lives.

As a country evolves from its rough pioneer stage, as it progresses in civilization, it begins to appreciate the men of the past and all they have stood for. Such has been the case with California. The interest in and appreciation of our pioneers, begun a generation ago, is ever growing. To-day several thousand visit the Missions where twenty saw them ten years ago. The campaign for the restoration of the Missions and the relaying of El Camino Real has aroused state-wide enthusiasm, and all classes of patriotic men and women have responded whatsoever be their creed. Old customs are renewed which perpetuate the memory of the past. At the breaking of the ground for the site of the present San Diego Exposition, the memory of St. Francis, "Everybody's St. Francis," the great father of all the Padres, was publicly honored.

The celebration began with religious and civic ceremonies, ending with a parade and attendant pageantry representing the twenty-one Missions. The Mission Play, written by John McGroarty, bids fair to be an abiding classic. It is the story of Father Serra, and shows first the coming of the relief ship to San Diego, and gives one an inspiring picture of the Mission days at San Carlos in the height of their prosperity. The last scene is at San Juan Capistrano, when evil times had come, and the Indian goatherd, child of the one brought to the first baptism in San Diego, is seen in the ruined chapel. The play ends with the promise of Señora Yaba to lay the Mission chalice on the Santa Barbara shrine as a memorial of the sacred heroism of the Mission idea. It is modeled on the old miracle play, as Henry Van Dyke says, "like a traveling company of players in the time of Hamlet, only in this case the players stay at home and let the travelers come to them." The play is performed at regular intervals throughout the winter before large and appreciative audiences. Dr. Van Dyke makes this comment on seeing this little masterpiece: "No one can see this play without thinking more reverently of Christianity,

"California and Its Missions, vol. ii., p. 515.