were built with the assistance of the Indians. The friars have handed
down by word of mouth many details in regard to their early missions;
others are found in the mission records, such as carefully kept records
of family events--births, marriages, and deaths. And there is the
testimony of the Indians regarding each other. Father Ubach has known a
number who were employed at the building of the mission of San Diego
(1769-71), a century before he took charge of this mission. These men
had been engaged in carrying timber from the mountains or in making
brick, and many of them were living within the last twenty years. There
are persons still living at the Indian village of Capitan Grande whose
ages he estimates at over one hundred and thirty years. Since the advent
of civilization the abstemious habits and Spartan virtues of these
Indians have been impaired, and their care for the aged has relaxed.

Dr. Palmer has a photograph (which I have seen) of a squaw whom he
estimates to be 126 years old. When he visited her he saw her put six
watermelons in a blanket, tie it up, and carry it on her back for two
miles. He is familiar with Indian customs and history, and a careful
cross-examination convinced him that her information of old customs was
not obtained by tradition. She was conversant with tribal habits she had
seen practised, such as the cremation of the dead, which the mission
fathers had compelled the Indians to relinquish. She had seen the
Indians punished by the fathers with floggings for persisting in the
practice of cremation.

At the mission of San Tomas, in Lower California, is still living an
Indian (a photograph of whom Dr. Remondino shows), bent and wrinkled,
whose age is computed at 140 years. Although blind and naked, he is
still active, and daily goes down the beach and along the beds of the
creeks in search of drift-wood, making it his daily task to gather and
carry to camp a fagot of wood.

[Illustration: OLD ADOBE HOUSE, POMONA.]

Another instance I give in Dr. Remondino's words: "Philip Crossthwaite,
who has lived here since 1843, has an old man on his ranch who mounts
his horse and rides about daily, who was a grown man breaking horses for
the mission fathers when Don Antonio Serrano was an infant. Don Antonio
I know quite well, having attended him through a serious illness some
sixteen years ago. Although now at the advanced age of ninety-three, he
is as erect as a pine, and he rides his horse wi