ordinance was ordered to be read, published and posted in the customary places. No order on this subject was received from the king, so Baron Carondelet, 1794, ordered two Indian slaves to abide with their masters until the royal will was expressed. In the same year, however, he ordered another Indian slave to be released.[150] It is evident, therefore, that it was not through direct executive decree that Indian slavery passed out of existence in Spanish territory within the present limits of the United States. In fact, from the instance cited in connection with Louisiana, it is seen that it did not pass out of existence until after the colonial period. Certain causes, however, contributed to its decline. Great number of Indians could be hired, at very small wages, to perform labor of any extent.[151] Still another cause, which was less effective perhaps in Spanish territory than in that of France and England, was the use of negro slaves. The labor of the blacks was early found to be more profitable than that of the Indians, and as early as the founding of St. Augustine, Menendez imported into Florida five hundred negro slaves. Otherwise, “the labor of building that town would have fallen on the white men, and on the Indians whom he could impress.”[152] From the earliest days of Spanish occupancy, the spiritual welfare of the Indians was of much concern to the Spanish Church and State. The materialization of such an interest was largely accomplished by the establishment of missions throughout the Spanish territory from Florida to California, chiefly through the labors of the Franciscans. The endeavors of the missionaries resulted in the establishment by 1615 of twenty missions in Florida and the dependent coast region. By 1655, the Christian Indian population of northern Florida and the Georgia coast was estimated at 26,000.[153] By 1630, there were more than 60,000 “converts” in the Pueblo missions of New Mexico and Arizona.[154] In California, the missions, the first of which was founded at San Diego in 1769, continued in a fairly prosperous condition until 1834.[155] These large numbers of barbarian neophytes were presided over in each of the missions by a very small number of monks who directed the religious and industrial activities of their Indian charges. It was necessary that a mission should be self-supporting. The Indians gathered at these centers voluntarily, and submitted to the routine life of the missions. But the natives were ignorant and incapable, and the monks were in consequence the directing and guiding force among a population which responded in a mechanical sort of way. The natural result was that the mission life developed into a kind of slavery. The life of a California mission, though of later date, and more fully developed than the earlier missions of colonial times, affords a picture of the general condition of affairs.