When we reach San Buenaventura, the next mission on our route, we find priests and Indians exceedingly busy, for word has come from Monterey that a Yankee trading vessel will soon sail for the south, and cattle must be killed and the fat rendered into tallow for the market. As hides and tallow are about the only commodities the padres have for sale, this is an important event. Indians tend the caldrons of bubbling grease, and keep up the fires under the kettles. When the tallow is slightly cooled, they pour it into sacks made from the skins of animals. These, when filled with the hardened tallow, look as though each again held a plump beast. Traveling up the coast we come one afternoon to A golden bay ‘neath soft blue skies Where on a hillside creamy rise The mission towers whose patron saint Is Barbara--with legend quaint. Here spring is merging into summer, and we are in time to see the ceremony which closes the wheat harvest. The workmen gather the last four sheaves from the field, and, fastening them in the form of a cross, carry them, followed by a long procession of dusky reapers, up the ascent to the church. As they approach, the bells burst out in a joyous peal, and from the mission doors the padres come forth, one bearing a cross, another the banner of the Virgin. A choir of Indian boys follows, chanting a hymn. All advance slowly down the avenue to meet the sheaf bearers, then counter march to the church, where the harvest festival is celebrated. Passing by other missions, we must close our journey with a visit to San Carlos, the Monterey mission, most prominent of all in the history of the church and state. It was from the first the special charge of Padre Junipero Serra, and, at the time we see it, his monument as well; for in it at last his weary body was laid to rest beside his friend Padre Juan Crespi, to whose writings, next to those of Padre Francisco Palou, we are most indebted for our knowledge of Junipero Serra and his great work. In 1813, with its graceful arched front and two towers, San Carlos was a noble-looking building, but since that time one tower has fallen. We are reminded, as we look, of the scene when Junipero lay dying. Ever since morning the grief-stricken people had been waiting, listening for the news from the sick room. When the tolling of the bell announced that the beautiful life was ended, crowds came weeping and lamenting, anxious to see again the beloved face. It was with great difficulty that the Indians could be kept from tearing the padre’s robe from his body, so earnestly did they desire to possess some relic of the father they had loved so long.