acquire, conquer, or annex the Sandwich Islands, the Islands of Japan, those of the great Malayan Archipelago, or the mighty "Flowery Empire "itself. A few more years, and a few millions of Americans on the Pacific may realize the gigantic scheme, which even our fathers, on the Atlantic border, would have laughed at as impossible and ridiculous. The railway across, or through the Snowy and Rocky Mountains, which will bind all North America with its iron arm into one mighty empire, will facilitate the operation. And then SAN FRANCISCO-in the execution and triumph of that scheme, will assuredly become what Liverpool, or even London is to England, and what New York is to the Middle and Eastern States of America—a grand depot for numberless manufactures and produce, and a harbor for the fleets of every nation. Long before that time, the English and American peoples will have finished the last great struggle which must some day take place between them for the commercial and political supremacy of the world. It is more than probable that the hosts of English from India, and Americans from California, will meet on the rich and densely peopled plains of China, and there decide their rival pretensions to universal dominion. Whatever may, in 1854, be thought of the relative strength of the two nations, it appears very evident to the people of America, that the natural increase of their population must necessarily make them victors in the end.

CHAPTER IV.

Conduct of the Fathers towards the natives.-Their mode of instructing, employing and subsisting the converts.-The Fathers do not appear to have promoted the true welfare of the aborigines, or done any good to humanity.-Pictures, if gaudily colored and horrible in subject, great aids to conversion.--Missions and population of the country at recent dates.-Table on this subject.Tables of the farm produce and domestic cattle of the country.-Table of prices.

Ir may now be necessary to explain shortly in what manner the Fathers conducted their missions, and the state of their property and finances down to the decline of their prosperity and ultimate fall. Their mode of conversion, if not very ingenious, was easy enough. It was like the teaching of a monkey, or a dog, by means of food and caresses, or sometimes by kicks, to perform a few simple tricks. The Indian-like the hare in Meg Dodds', or it may be Mrs. Glass's Cookery Book, being first caught, was dressed in the following fashion, as described by Captain Beechy, in his second voyage :-"I happened to visit the mission about this time and saw these unfortunate beings under tuition. They were clothed in blankets, and arrayed in a row before a blind Indian who understood their dialect, and was assisted by an alcalde to keep order. Their tutor began by desiring them to kneel, informing them that he was going to teach them the names of the persons composing the Trinity, and that they were to repeat in Spanish what he dictated. The neophytes being thus arranged, the speaker began:-Santissima Trinidad, Dios, Jesu Christo, Espiritu Santo-pausing between each name to listen if the simple Indians, who had never spoken a Spanish word before, pronounced it correctly, or any thing near the mark. After they had repeated these names satisfactorily, their blind tutor, after a pause, added, Santos-and recapitulated the names of a great many saints, which finished the morning's tuition."

The pay and inducement to the Indians to submit to what

would doubtless appear even to them a farrago of nonsense, were a daily allowance of Atole and Pozzoli, which were two kinds of pottages, the first composed of barley flour and the second of the same, varied by the addition of peas, beans and maize. The for

mer was the usual breakfast and supper dish, the latter was chiefly taken for dinner. Then huts, of which the Fathers kept the keys, were provided for the nightly lodgings of the faithful; while a simple kind of clothing was furnished to them at intervals. Soldiers took care meanwhile that order, decency and obedience were strictly observed at work and play, at devotion and rest. In return for these benefits, the Indians rose early, and attended mass every morning, for an hour; and during the day, in the intervals between a second mass and meals and pretty constant prayers, cultivated the gardens and fields of the missions, gathered, preserved and arranged for sale the farm produce, herded and attended to the wants of their cattle, built their houses, spun,

wove and cooked, and in all respects drudged patiently, though they do not appear to have taken the work very laboriously, as the born slaves of the Fathers, whose absolute, will was all that they could comprehend or obey. With the instinct of a dog, they fawned on and loved their owners, and perhaps would have readily died to do them service. How different all this from the free, intelligent and bold spirit of the present community! To sharpen the intellects of the converts, sticks, whips, long goads and the like were unhesitatingly employed by the beadles of the churches, during mass and prayers, to silence the unruly and make the refractory attentive and dutiful. Starvation and stripes indeed attended the perverse Indian wherever he went; and it was his interest, he could be made to understand that at all events, to comply with the wishes of his kind priestly persecutors, as far as his animal nature would permit.

The conversion produced by such means could scarcely be intellectual or very sincere. It seemed sufficient, however, that the Indian duly attended mass (which he was obliged to do under penalty of a sound, edifying whipping), knelt and muttered his incomprehensible Spanish words, made the sign of the cross often and properly enough, and could correctly repeat to his spiritual tutors, when called upon, the few cabalistic phrases which they had taught him. Whether he understood the meaning of these things was quite another question, as to which it was not necessary for the Fathers to be impertinently curious. What were these brown things, after all, but beasts-irrational beings, who might have a soul truly to be saved, but whom it was absurd to consider as having a mind! Individually, the Fathers seem to have been pious and philanthropic men; but certainly humanity and California owe them nothing. Every thing, even happiness, is comparative; and to the mind, undarkened by the gloomy theology which considers the formal act of baptism without the understanding soul to be sufficient for salvation, it must surely be evident that the aboriginal savage, "lord of all he surveyed," was a more dignified and happy creature than the sleek, lazy, stall-fed beast of burden into which the Fathers had entrapped, or converted him.

In the churches, which were, of course, the leading and most

substantial buildings of the country, the walls were hung with glaringly painted pictures-the more gaudy, the more valuable and effectual-of the saints, and especially of heaven and hell, to astonish and fix the faith of the converts. La Pérouse observes that a horrible representation of hell in the church of San Carlos has thus had a wonderful effect in promoting conversion; while

he considers that the picture of paradise in the same church, by reason of its subdued coloring and treatment, had comparatively little effect. In 1775, when Father Garzes was travelling, on a crusading or proselyting expedition, from Sonora to California, he carried with him a painted banner, on one side of which was represented the Blessed Virgin Mary, and on the other the devil in the flames of hell. On arriving at an Indian settlement, the missionary took his first step of conversion. Just as the travelling mountebank blows his horn and flutters his flag on approaching a village of likely gulls, so did our good Father