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William Henry Hudson - The Famous Missions of California
been kept up, and the large demands made later upon them for provisions and money, had by this time
made serious inroads upon their resources; notwithstanding which they had faithfully persisted in their
work. The new law now dealt them a crushing blow. Ten years of great confusion followed, and then an
effort was made to save them from the complete ruin by which they were threatened by a proclamation
ordering that the more important of them, twelve in number, should be restored to the padres. Nothing
came of this, however; the collapse continued; and in 1846, the sale of the mission buildings was decreed
by the Departmental Assembly. When in the August of that year, the American flag was unfurled at
Monterey, everything connected with the missions - their lands, their priests, their neophytes, their
management - was in a state of seemingly hopeless chaos. Finally General Kearney issued a declaration
to the effect that "the missions and their property should remain under the charge of the Catholic priests .
. . until the titles to the lands should be decided by proper authority." But of whatever temporary service
this measure may have been, it was of course altogether powerless to breathe fresh life into a system
already in the last stages of decay. The mission-buildings were crumbling into ruins. Their lands were
neglected; their converts for the most part dead or scattered. The rule of the padres was over. The
Spanish missions in Alta California were things of the past.
In these late days of a civilization so different in all its essential elements from that which the
Franciscans laboured so strenuously to establish on the Pacific Coast, we may think of the fathers as we
will, and pass what judgment we see fit upon their work. But be that what it may, our hearts cannot fail to
be touched and stirred by the pitiful story of those true servants of God who, in the hour of ultimate
disaster, firmly refused to be separated from their flocks.
Among the ruins of San Luis Obispo, in 1842, De Mofras found the oldest Spanish priest then left in
California, who, after sixty years of unremitting toil, was then reduced to such abject poverty that he was
forced to sleep on a hide, drink from a horn, and feed upon strips of meat dried in the sun. Yet this
faithful creature still continued to share the little he possessed with the children of the few Indians who
lingered in the huts about the deserted church; and when efforts were made to induce him to seek some
other spot where he might find refuge and rest, his answer was that he meant to die at his post. The same
writer has recorded an even more tragic case from the annals of La Soledad. Long after the settlement
there had been abandoned, and when the buildings were falling to pieces, an old priest, Father Sarrķa, still
remained to minister to the bodily and physical wants of a handful of wretched natives who yet haunted
the neighborhood, and whom he absolutely refused to forsake. One Sunday morning in August, 1833,
after his habit, he gathered his neophytes together in what was once the church, and began, according to
his custom, the celebration of the mass. But age, suffering, and privation had by this time told fatally
upon him. Hardly had he commenced the service, when his strength gave way. He stumbled upon the
crumbling altar, and died, literally of starvation, in the arms of those to whom for thirty years he had
given freely whatever he had to give. Surely these simple records of Christ-like devotion will live in the
tender remembrance of all who revere the faith that, linked with whatever creed, manifests itself in good
works, the love that spends itself in service, the quiet heroism that endures to the end.
XI.
The California missions, though greatly varying of course in regard to size and economy, were
constructed upon the same general plan, in the striking and beautiful style of architecture, roughly known
as Moorish, which the fathers transplanted from Spain, but which rather seems by reason of its singular
appropriateness, a native growth of the new soil. The edifices which now, whether in ruins or in
restoration, still testify to the skill and energy of their pious designers, were in all cases later, in most
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