are even less attractive than those displayed at the
Mission of San Gabriel; yet there are shown at least two enormous
missals which are no less than four feet long by two feet wide,
and beautifully inscribed on parchment.

[Illustration: SANTA BARBARA MISSION FROM THE FARM.]

[Illustration: WHERE THE FATHERS WALKED.]

"What is the Mission's income?" I asked the gentle monk who acted as
my guide.

"Alas!" he answered, "we have very little. You know our lands are
gone. We have barely twenty-five acres now. Moreover, we are outside
the village; and, as there is another church, most Catholics go
there. We receive, indeed, occasional offerings from travelers; but
we are very poor."

"Who cultivates your twenty-five acres?" I inquired.

"According to our ability, we are all busy," was the answer, "some
till the garden; others train young men for the priesthood; one of
our number is a carpenter; and another," he added, evidently laughing
at his own expense, "knows just enough about machinery to make a bad
break worse."

"And the Indians?" I said.

"Not one is left," was the reply. "Though once the Mission counted
them by thousands, they are all dead and gone. There are their
monuments," he added, pointing to the fragments of a mill and one or
two industrial shops.

[Illustration: THE CEMETERY, SANTA BARBARA.]

I looked and saw the remnants of a giant wheel which formerly had
been turned by water, brought from the hills to feed the Fathers'
lands. The water was still flowing, but the wheel lay, broken,--symbolic
of the link which bound the Mission to the vanished past.

The first Roman Catholic Bishop of California and some of the early
Fathers are buried in the chapel of the monastery, but interments are
now made in a neighboring cemetery, strictly reserved for members of
the Mission, each of whom has there his predestined place. Yet even
in this humble Campo Santo life will not yield entirely to death. The
hum of droning insects breaks the stillness of the empty cloisters;
occasionally a lizard darts like a tongue of flame along the walls;
grasses and trailing plants adorn impartially the ground containing
human dust, and that which still awaits an occupant; while round a
stately crucifix, which casts its shadow like a benediction on the
sleeping dead, sweet wild flowers bloom throughout the year, and from
their swinging censers offer incense to the figure of the Saviour
with each passing breeze. The hush of