the morning prayers, and we see the natives hurrying to the church.
After service they gather for breakfast of mush and tortillas. As the
flocks and herds have increased, meat forms part of the daily food,
sometimes from the freshly killed beeves, but generally in a dried state
called carne seco. After breakfast the workers go in groups to their
various employments. Dinner is served at eleven, and they have a resting
period until two. Then work is again taken up and continued until an
hour before sunset, when the bells call to evening prayer. Supper
follows the evening service, after which the Indians can do as they like
until bedtime. We see some engaged in a game of ball. Many are squatted
on the ground playing other games,--gambling, we suspect. In one group
there is dancing to the music of violin and guitar. There is laughter
and chattering on all sides, and to us they seem happy, at least for the
time.

The life led by the Indians at the missions was not generally a hard
one. No doubt when they first came, or were brought, into the
settlements, from their free wild life, they found it harder to keep the
regular hours of the missions than to perform the work, which was seldom
very heavy. When disobedient or lazy, they were punished severely,
judging by the standards of to-day, but really no harder than was at
that time the custom in schools and in navies the world over. When the
soldiers came in contact with the natives, there was generally cruel
treatment for the latter. But as far as possible the padres stood
between their charges and the soldiers, always placing the mission as
far from the presidio as the safety of the former would allow.

At San Diego, about five years after its settlement, wild Indians
surprised the mission guard, and killed the padre and several of the
converted Indians in a most cruel manner. The Spanish government gave