He was an Indian, employed at the Mission of San Fernando, distant three days’ journey from their present position, and was now searching for a band of horses and mules which had strayed. San Fernando, it appeared, had once before been visited by a party of mountain free-traders, and the Indian therefore divined the object of the present one. He was, he told them, “_un Indio, pero mansito_:” an Indian, but a tame one;[5] “_de mas, Christiano_;” a Christian moreover, (exhibiting a small cross which hung round his neck.) There were many people about the mission, he said, who knew how to fight, and had plenty of arms; and there were enough to “eat up” the “_Americanos, sin frijoles_,” without beans, as he facetiously observed. For his part, however, he was very friendly to the _Americanos_; he had once met a man of that nation who was a good sort of fellow, and had made him a present of tobacco, of which he was particularly fond. Finding this hint did not take, he said that the horses and mules belonging to the mission were innumerable—“like that,” he added, sweeping his hand to all points of the compass over the plain, to intimate that they would cover that extent; and he could point out a large herd grazing nearer at hand than the mission, and guarded but by three _vaqueros_. Regaled with venison, and with a smoke of his coveted tobacco, he rode off, and made his way to the mission without delay; conveying the startling intelligence that a thousand Americans were upon them. The next morning the thirteen doughty mountaineers quietly resumed their journey, moving leisurely along towards the object of their expedition. It will not be out of place here to digress a little, in order to describe the singular features of the establishments formed in those remote regions by the Catholic church, as nuclei round which to concentrate the wandering tribes that inhabit the country, with a view to give them the benefit of civilised example, and to wean them from their restless nomadic habits. The establishment of missions in Upper California is coeval with the first settlement of Southern Mexico. No sooner had Spanish rule taken a firm foothold in the Aztec empire, than the avowed primary object of the military expedition began to be carried into effect. “To save the souls” of the savage and barbarous subjects of their most Catholic majesties was ever inculcated upon the governors of the conquered country as the grand object to be sought after, as soon as tranquillity was partially restored by the submission of the Mexicans; and the cross, the sacred emblem of the Catholic faith, was to be upraised in the remotest corners of the country, and the natives instructed and compelled to worship it, in lieu of the grotesque images of their own idolatrous religion.