building others with the greatest facility. Opposite the rancherias,
and near to the mission, is to be found a small garrison, with
proportionate rooms, for a corporal and five soldiers with their
families. This small garrison is quite sufficient to prevent any
attempt of the Indians from taking effect, there having been some
examples made, which causes the Indians to respect this small force.
One of these pickets in a mission has a double object; besides keeping
the Indians in subjection, they run post with a monthly correspondence,
or with any extraordinaries that may be necessary for government.

"All the missions in this California are under the charge of religious
men of the order of San Francisco. At the present time their number is
twenty-seven, most of them of an advanced age. Each mission has one of
these fathers for its administrator, and he holds absolute authority.
The tilling of the ground, the gathering of the harvest, the
slaughtering of cattle, the weaving, and everything that concerns the
mission, is under the direction of the fathers, without any other
person interfering in any way whatever, so that, if any one mission has
the good fortune to be superintended by an industrious and discreet
padre, the Indians disfrute in abundance all the real necessaries of
life; at the same time the nakedness and misery of any one mission are
a palpable proof of the inactivity of its director. The missions extend
their possessions from one extremity of the territory to the other, and
have made the limits of one mission from those of another. Though they
do not require all this land for their agriculture and the maintenance
of their stock, they have appropriated the whole; always strongly
opposing any individual who may wish to settle himself or his family on
any piece of land between them. But it is to be hoped that the new
system of illustration, and the necessity of augmenting private
properly, and the people of reason, will cause the government to take