parts of his garden,
but soon gave it up on account of the constant attention it needed, and
disliking the tough wiry grass, native to the region, he trained his
plants to cover the ground, letting them spread and wander much at
their will. Here was his rest from the many and varied labors in a Nueva
California mission; and here he was to be found when at leisure, seeing
if his plants were given the proper attention by his gardener, studying
changes from time to time in their arrangement, or wandering about, now
here, now there, with eyes bent on the ground, meditating on his duties,
or gazing off to the distant horizon, and dreaming of his early life in
his boyhood home.

But this morning Father Zalvidea was thinking of anything but. Spain,
or even of his garden, as he passed slowly back and forth among the
plants. His thoughts were occupied with the instructions he had received
the night before. One must put one's self in the Father's place, and
know something of his life and surroundings, to appreciate the reason
for his dislike to the proposed change. The missions in Nueva California
were lonely, isolated spots of civilization in the midst of many Indian
tribes. Each one, twenty to fifty miles distant from the neighboring
mission on either side, lived, in a great measure, solely for itself,
as it was dependent, in most things, on itself alone. There was
communication, of course, between the different missions, with the
president at Monterey, and with Mexico; but, occasionally, weeks would
go by without a single messenger from the outside world, during
which time each mission was a little world by itself. This tended to
strengthen the love for locality, which was still farther increased
from the fathers' having no family ties, leading them, each one, in his
celibate state, to become more deeply attached to his own particular
field of labor, with an intensity not often seen in other classes of
men. Thus our Father Zalvidea had been so long at Mission San Gabriel,
that he had come to look on it almost as his own, in more senses than
the one strictly of being its religious and temporal head. He had
carried on the good work, begun by his predecessor, Father Sanchez,
and had brought the mission to such a state of prosperity, that it was
second to none in wealth, and to but few in number of Indian neophytes.
Now, as he wandered around in his garden, he gazed at the buildings of
his establishment scattered, near and far, i