On the absurd and ludicrous application of the term "Spanish" in our midst to many persons who have no claim to it by either birth or descent we will not dwell, as we would not cheapen our sketch by stooping to discuss such ignorance or insult our intelligent readers by writing on such foolishness, we will only ask their permission to say that many so-called intelligent people have no conception of the Spanish type, race or character, but these we will leave "a la luna de Valencia" as an ancient Spanish saying would express such cases. The California families of Spanish descent are comparatively few, this being noted especially by Spanish visitors to California. But what of Spanish generosity at home, when the missionaries were toiling for souls in the New World? Many a pious Spaniard in Spain and in Mexico subscribed immense sums for the missions of California, both for the Jesuit and the Franciscan missions. Thus we find the pious Marquis de Villa Puente subscribing $200,000 for "missions, vessels and other necessities of California." The Duchess of Gandia subscribed $60,000 for the same purpose in 1767 and many others followed the same example until the "Pius Fund of the Missions of California" amounted to over two million dollars. At the time of the Secularization of the Missions, the Mexican Government confiscated a large remaining portion of this "Pious Fund." In 1853 the Spanish Archbishop Alemany, then Bishop of Monterey and successor of Bishop Diego from whom the "Pious Fund" had been taken, started a litigation which was continued in turn by his worthy successor Archbishop Patrick Riordan of the archdiocese of San Francisco, with the good result that Mexico was made to pay the sum of $43,050 in Mexican currency annually as the interest at six per cent on the sum of $1,460,682 of the "Pious Fund" which the national treasury of Mexico had appropriated on the promise of Mexico to act as trustee of the fund and pay an interest of six per cent which it had failed to pay since its appropriation at the time of the Mexican regime in California. Moreover, Mexico had agreed to pay this interest to the object intended by the donors of the fund, namely, "to the church, for the conversion of the natives of California, for the establishment, maintenance and extension of the Catholic Church, her faith and worship, in said country of Upper and Lower California." The litigation was won through the intervention of the United States Government which Archbishop Riordan invoked through his counsel, and decided by arbitrators under the Hague Convention in 1899. The first payment was made on February 2, 1903.