himself more and more, year after year, as
he found himself comparatively powerless to do anything for the hundreds
of Indians that he would fain have seen gathered once more, as of old,
into the keeping of the Church. He had made frequent visits to them in
their shifting refuges, following up family after family, band after
band, that he knew; he had written bootless letter after letter to the
Government officials of one sort and another, at Washington. He had made
equally bootless efforts to win some justice, some protection for them,
from officials nearer home; he had endeavored to stir the Church itself
to greater efficiency in their behalf. Finally, weary, disheartened,
and indignant with that intense, suppressed indignation which the poetic
temperament alone can feel, he had ceased,--had said, "It is of no use;
I will speak no word; I am done; I can bear no more!" and settling down
into the routine of his parochial duties to the little Mexican and Irish
congregation of his charge in San Diego, he had abandoned all effort to
do more for the Indians than visit their chief settlements once or twice
a year, to administer the sacraments. When fresh outrages were brought
to his notice, he paced his room, plucked fiercely at his black beard,
with ejaculations, it is to be feared, savoring more of the camp than
the altar; but he made no effort to do anything. Lighting his pipe, he
would sit down on the old bench in his tile-paved veranda, and smoke
by the hour, gazing out on the placid water of the deserted harbor,
brooding, ever brooding, over the wrongs he could not redress.

A few paces off from his door stood the just begun walls of a fine
brick church, which it had been the dream and pride of his heart to
see builded, and full of worshippers. This, too, had failed. With San
Diego's repeatedly vanishing hopes and dreams of prosperity had gone
this hope and dream of Father Gaspara's. It looked, now, as if it
would be indeed a waste of money to build a costly church on this site.
Sentiment, however sacred and loving towards the dead, must yield to
the demands of the living. To build a church on the ground where Father
Junipero first trod and labored, would be a work to which no Catholic
could be indifferent; but there were other and more pressing claims to
be met first. This was right. Yet the sight of these silent walls, only
a few feet high, was a sore one to Father Gaspara,--a daily cross, which
he did not find grow