According to Clavigero these journeys totalled about twenty thousand miles. It is almost incredible, but Bolton tells us that "Kino's endurance in the saddle was worthy of a seasoned cowboy." Thus when he went to the City of Mexico in 1695, he travelled on that single journey no less than 1500 miles; and he accomplished it in fifty-three days. Two years later, when he reached the Gila on the north, he did seven or eight hundred miles in thirty days. In 1699, on his trip to and from the Gila he made seven hundred and twenty miles in thirty nine days; in 1700, a thousand miles in twenty-six days; and in 1701, eleven hundred miles in thirty-five days. He was then nearly sixty years of age. Meantime, Salvatierra had been painfully establishing missions all along the barren peninsula, but was so woefully discouraged that he was on the point of returning to Mexico. At this juncture Father Juan Ugarte arrived on the scene. He had been Salvatierra's agent in Mexico for collecting funds, but when he heard of the threatening condition of things in California he had himself relieved of his rectorship in San Gregorio and became a missionary. It was really he who saved the whole enterprise from destruction. He was born in Honduras about the year 1660, and entered the Society at Tapozotclan. As soon as he set foot on the Peninsula, he began a reorganization of the whole economic system of the missions. With St. Paul, he believed that a man who did not work should not eat, and consequently that Salvatierra's benignant method of feeding every savage who would come to the "doctrina," or catechism, was psychologically, religiously and economically wrong. Hence, when he found himself fixed at San Javier, he taught the natives how to cultivate the land, to dig ditches for irrigation, to plant trees, to trim vines and to raise live stock. Of course, the savages were surprised at the new system, but although Ugarte was very kind, he was very positive and his bodily strength astounded and appalled his neophytes. The result was that while other missions were starving, San Javier had fields of corn, rich pastures and great herds of cattle. It took a long time to make this system acceptable everywhere on the Peninsula; when it was adopted it was difficult to make it a success--even Ugarte's own fields were devastated and his cattle stolen. Indeed, conditions grew so desperate in 1701, that Salvatierra at last determined to abandon California and go back to Mexico. Ugarte stood out against it and protested that he would never give up until his superiors called him back. To show that he meant what he said, he went to the church and laid a vow to that effect on the altar.