and cracked, and its statues, brought a hundred years ago from Spain, scarcely less battered than those which the boy had shown me in the sacristy.  Yet it was plain that worshipers as well as vandals had been here.  The basins for holy water, cut in the solid wall, were worn, like the steps of an ancient building, with countless fingers, long since turned to dust.  There, also, were two old confessionals, one of which was so hopelessly infirm that it had been set aside at last, to listen to no more whispered tales of sin and sorrow.  The doors of the church at first looked ancient, but wore a really modern air, when compared with the original portals, which, no longer able to stand upright, had been laid against the wall, to show to tourists.  Yet, eighty years ago, this church stood proudly at the head of all the Missions, and reared its cross above the richest of their valleys.  According to Father Joaquin’s estimate, the Fathers of San Gabriel must have had twenty thousand acres under cultivation, and, in 1820, this Mission alone possessed one hundred and sixty thousand vines, two thousand three hundred trees, twenty-five thousand head of cattle, and fifteen thousand sheep.  “It was all ours,” he said, with a sweep of his hand, “we had reclaimed it from the desert, and, by the treaty between the United States and Mexico, we were allowed to retain all lands that we had cultivated.  Yet of those twenty thousand acres, one hundred and fifty are all that are left us!”

The Padre accompanied me to the station.  “How large is your parish, Father?” I asked.

“It is thirteen miles long,” was his reply, “and I have in it eight hundred souls, but most of them live too far away to walk to church, and are too poor to ride.”

“And how many Indians have you?”

“Perhaps a hundred,” he answered, “and even they are dying off.”

“What of their character?” I asked.

“They have sadly fallen away,” was the response.  “True, they are Christians as far as they are anything, but they are hopelessly degraded, yet they respect the Church, and are obedient and reverential when under its influence.”

[Illustration:  Discarded saints, San Gabriel.]

[Illustration:  Mutilated statues.]

[Illustration:  The baptismal Font.]

[Illustration:  San Gabriel, from the southeast.]

Most of the Californian Missions are really dead, and near that of La Purissima may still be seen the rent in the ground made by the earthquake which destroyed it.  Others, like San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, are dragging out a moribund existence, under the care of only one or two priests, who move like melancholy phantoms through the lonely cloisters, and pray among the ruins of a noble past.  The Mission of Santa Barbara, however, is in fairly good repair, and a few Franciscan Fathers still reside there and carry on a feeble imitation of their former life.