The Glenwood post., 1905-11-04

shrine and bears her name All
things that were not intended have
come. and all that were hoped for
are gone. Here have lived and died
the dusky generations of whose his
tory or times or thoughts there has
been left us not single word or an
indication. Surrounded now by all
that is new, by the improvements of
the worlds most restless deniZens by a
skill that accomplishes in single
year the results of Spanish century
and an Italian eternity, it is still
Santa Barbara mission, abiding in
peace that is held about it by II
spell. 1t is history strangely ming
led with that sunshine and romance
which goes everywhere with the Span
ish people. The Spanish tongue and
faith were here firmly planted amid
surroundings so natural that the only
difference was that they were better.
No land the Spaniard found in al his
wanderings suited him and was made
for him so nearly as this.
The line of missions was about
seven hundred miles long from San
Diego northward They lay contigu
Gus and adjoining. Their sites were
the most eligible spots of the sunniest
land the world knows Their affairs
were administered by the Padres with
much skill. Seven hundred thou
sand cattle grazed on the mission
pastures with sixty thousand horses
and an immense number of other
domestic animals A hundred and
twenty Thousand bushels of wheat
we're raised annually, beside all other
crops. Gardens, vineyards and or
chards surrounded OF were contiguous
to all the missions. except the two
most northerly ones. The total av
erage annual gains of the missions
from sales and trades was more than
two million dollars. The value of
the live stock alone was in 1884 two
millions of dollars The Spanish gov
ernment had a theory upon which
these missions were established. 1t
was that after ten years the Indians
would become citizens, living in
agricultural communities on land Sc
cured to them, and self supporting
and perhaps prosperous. They in
tended to use the missions to this end,
but they lacked every personal sur
rounding they We're intended for.
In thirty years or less their converts
had become their servants, and they
themselves were no longer self denying
missionaries. Success was so great
that zeal was disarnled, monastic vows
We're forgotten, prayer and faith be-
came merely forms. During sixty
five years thirty thousand Indians
attended ch urch at these twenty one
missions, and eighty thousand were
buried in the mission cemeteries.
When the heroic soul of Junipero
Sierra departed at Monterey in 1884,
the end for which he had endured and
prayed was lost sight of, and the hu
man love of ease and gain arose up
pernost in all minds. Thus the
briefest history of Southern Califor-
mia developed one of the saddest
stories to be found in the annals of
Christian endeavor 1t was work
wrought almost in vain. There are
no results, and the doom of race
sealed by the effort to civilize and
save them. The Indians of the mis-.
sions existed In great numbers sixty
years ago. What has become of him
numerically is a question often asked
but never answered. II there are
diaries. journals, personal narratives,
hints, descriptions they are lost.
There seemed to be in the minds of
some of the priests a tinge of regret
not that they are gone but that they
ever came
There still hovers about the Califor
mia missions an atmosphere which all
the winds cannot blow away, which
is unique in American life, and of
which these ruins seem to afford the
only taste. Let the visitor to Cali
fornia remember carelessly perhaps,
yet still remember, that about him lie
the ruins of that time which is the
connecting link between a past so re-
mote that above it hangs mist
which is like the purple veil of the
California hills and that wonderful
present which is so unlike all the
past.
The founders of these missions look
ed far into the future, but they could
not read fate and there was nothing
else to read.
A. DECKER.