Father Geronimo Boscana, “Chinigchinich; a historical account of the origin, customs, and traditions of the Indians at the missionary establishment of St. Juan Capistrano, Alta California,” appended to Alfred Robinson's Life in California (New York, 1846), pp. 291 sq.; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 168. The mission station of San Juan Capistrano is described by R. H. Dana (Two Years before the Mast, chaps. xviii. and xxiv.). A favourable picture of the missions is drawn by H. von Langsdorf (Reise um die Welt, Frankfort, 1812, ii. pp. 134 sqq.), by Duflos de Mofras (“Fragment d'un Voyage en Californie,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), ii. Série, xix. (1843) pp. 9-13), and by a writer (H. H.) in The Century Magazine, May, 1883, pp. 2-18. But the severe discipline of the Spanish monks is noticed by other travellers. We are told that the Indians laboured during the day in the fields to support their Spanish masters, were driven to church twice or thrice a day to hear service in a language which they did not understand, and at night were shut up in crowded and comfortless barracks, without windows and without beds. When the monks desired to make new proselytes, or rather to capture new slaves, they called in the aid of the soldiery, who attacked the Indian villages by night, lassoed the fugitives, and dragged them back at their horses' tails to slavery in the missions. See O. von Kotzebue, Reise um die Welt (Weimar, 1830), ii. 42 sqq.; F. W. Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Strait (London, 1831), ii. chap. i.; A. Schabelski, “Voyage aux colonies russes de l'Amérique,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), ii. Série, iv. (1835) pp. 216-218. A poet has described with prosaic accuracy the pastoral crook by which these good shepherds brought back their strayed lambs to the spiritual fold:—
“Six horses sprang across the level
ground
As six dragoons in open order
dashed;
Above their heads the lassos
circled round,
In every eye a pious fervour
flashed;
They charged the camp, and in
one moment more
They lassoed six and reconverted
four.”
(Bret Harte, Friar Pedro's Ride.)
In the verses inscribed The Angelus, heard at the Mission Dolores, 1868, and beginning
“Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten
music
Still fills the wide
expanse,”
the same poet shews that he is not insensible to the poetical side of those old Spanish missions, which have long passed away.