Dinner at the padre’s table we find most enjoyable. There is beef and chicken, the frijole, or red bean of Spain, and other vegetables prepared in a tasty manner peculiar to Spanish cooking, so we do not doubt that the cook has been taught his trade by the padre himself. The Indian boys who wait on the table also show careful training, performing their duties quickly and quietly. Here we can find for bread the tortilla,--still the food of the Indian and Mexican people of California. It is a thin cake made of meal or flour and water, and baked without grease on a hot stone or griddle. Wines made at the mission, the favorite chocolate, thick and sweet, and some fruit from the padre’s garden complete the meal. Dinner over, we visit the church and admire the striking contrast between the red tiles of the roof and the creamy white of the walls. All the buildings are made of bricks molded from a clay called adobe and dried slowly in the sun. Each brick is twelve inches square by four inches thick, and the walls are laid two or three bricks deep, those of the church itself being nearly four feet in thickness. It seems almost impossible that so large and well made a building could have been constructed by untrained workmen. Next to the church are the rooms of the padres, then the dining room and the quarters of the mission guard, which consists apparently of but two men, the rest being at the presidio, several miles away. Adjoining these are the storehouses and shops of the Indian workmen, all of which open on the great courtyard. In the courtyard is a busy scene. Blacksmiths with hammer and anvil make sounding blows as they work up old iron into needed farm utensils. The soap maker’s caldron sends up a cloud of ill-smelling steam. At one side carpenters are at work trimming and cutting square holes in logs for the beams of new buildings which the padres wish to put up. Saddle makers, squatted on the ground, are busy fashioning saddletrees, carving, and sewing leather. The shoemaker is hard at work with needle and awl. These and many other trades are all going on at once. These courts, which are called patios, were generally several acres in extent and at the most flourishing period of the missions each settlement often gave shelter to over a thousand people.