after internal administration and religious instruction; the younger has
direction of agricultural work . . . For the sake of order and morals,
whites are employed only where strictly necessary, for the fathers know
their influence to be altogether harmful, and that they lead the Indians
to gambling and drunkenness, to which vices they are already too prone.
To encourage the natives in their tasks, the fathers themselves often
lend a hand, and everywhere furnish an example of industry. Necessity
has made them industrious. One is struck with astonishment on observing
that, with such meagre resources, often without European workmen or any
skilled help, but with the assistance only of savages, always
unintelligent and often hostile, they have yet succeeded in executing
such works of architecture and engineering as mills, machinery, bridges,
roads, and canals for irrigation. For the erection of nearly all the
mission buildings it was necessary to bring to the sites chosen, beams
cut on mountains eight or ten leagues away, and to teach the Indians to
burn lime, cut stone, and make bricks.

"Around the mission," De Mofras continues, "are the huts of the
neophytes, and the dwellings of some white colonists. Besides the
central establishment, there exists, for a space of thirty or forty
leagues, accessory farms to the number of fifteen or twenty, and branch
chapels (chapelles succursales). Opposite the mission is a guard-house
for an escort, composed of four cavalry soldiers and a sergeant. These
act as messengers, carrying orders from one mission to another, and in
the earlier days of conquest repelled the savages who would sometimes
attack the settlement."

Of the daily life and routine of a mission, accounts of travelers enable
us to form a pretty vivid picture; and though doubtless changes of
detail might be marked in passing from place to place, the larger and