[Illustration: SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO.]

[Illustration: GROUP OF FRANCISCAN FRIARS.]

To the reader, thinker, and poet the memories and associations of
these Missions form, next to the gifts of Nature, the greatest charm
of Southern California; and, happily, although that semi-patriarchal
life has passed away, its influence still lingers; for, scattered
along the coast--some struggling in poverty, some lying in
neglect--are the adobe churches, cloisters, and fertile
Mission-fields of San Juan Capistrano, San Fernando Rey, Santa
Monica, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, all of which still preserve
the soft and gracious names, so generously given in those early days,
and fill us with a genuine reverence for the sandaled monks, who by
incessant toil transformed this barren region into a garden, covered
these boundless plains with flocks and herds, and dealt so wisely
with the Indians that even their poor descendants, to-day, reverence
their memory.

[Illustration: CHIEF OF A TRIBE OF MISSION INDIANS.]

The Saxon has done vastly more, it is true; but, in some ways, he has
done much less. The very names which he bequeathed to places not
previously christened by the Spaniards, such as Gold Gulch, Hell's
Bottom, and Copperopolis, tell a more forcible, though not as
beautiful a tale, as the melodious titles, San Buenaventura, San
Francisco Dolores, Santa Clara, San Gabriel, and La Purissima.

[Illustration: INDIAN WOMEN.]