"Harsh, oppressive, endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance," if such actions mean all that these saintly missionaries accomplished, if they mean their leaving refinement, christianity, fond home and kindred in distant Spain to brave untold hardships, nay, martyrdom, to rescue souls from paganism, and if such conduct as "harshness, oppression, endeavoring to keep the Indians in ignorance" could be compatible with the practice of heroic virtue and acts of mortification of mind and body which to the spiritual man or woman appear beyond words of admiration, to the scoffer and frivolous (but for this latter class we are not writing) foolish and impossible. The missions too, with their honest wealth and industry were California's first centers of enlightenment and refinement. The Spanish missionaries were scholars as well as religious, and their institutions were California's cradles of literature, music and learning hand in hand with religion. To these early fathers we owe the first paintings and statues brought to California, while their well equipped missions, even contained medicine chests and medical books, to them we also owe the first architecture in the building of the missions, the first agricultural implements, even the first system of irrigation, in the state; to these we may add the first stock of sheep, cattle, horses, the first fruits, vineyards and teeming grain fields, yes, even the first roses of California were brought here by them, and it was from the missions that Dr. Robert Semple borrowed the printing type, wherewith he printed the first newspaper in California, which appeared in Monterey in 1846, making the letter "w" by joining two vs as the Spanish alphabet contains twenty-five letters, "w" excepted.