For a State Botanical Collection 3,000 In accordance with another proposition of Gen. Vallejo, the committee further report in favor of submitting this offer to the acceptance of the people, at the next general election. The report adds: “Your committee cannot dwell with too much warmth upon the magnificent propositions contained in the memorial of Gen. Vallejo. They breathe throughout the spirit of an enlarged mind, and a sincere public benefactor, for which he deserves the thanks of this body, and the gratitude of California. Such a proposition looks more like the legacy of a prince to his people, than the free donation of a private planter to a great state.” CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MISSION ESTABLISHMENTS IN CALIFORNIA.—THEIR ORIGIN, OBJECTS, LOCALITIES, LANDS, REVENUES, OVERTHROW. The missions of California are the most prominent features in her history. They were established to propagate the Roman faith, and extend the domain of the Spanish crown. They contemplated the conversion of the untutored natives, and a permanent possession of the soil. They were an extension of the same system which, half a century previous, had achieved such signal triumphs on the peninsula and through the northern provinces of Mexico. The founders were men of unwearied zeal and heroic action; their enterprise, fortitude, and unshaken purpose might rouse all the slumbering strings of the religious minstrel. In Alta California these missions formed a religious cordon the entire extent of the coast. They were reared at intervals of twelve or fourteen leagues in all the great fertile valleys opening on the sea. The first was founded in 1769; others followed fast, and before the close of the century the whole twenty were in effective operation. Each establishment contained within itself the elements of its strength, the sources of its aggrandizement. It embraced a massive church, garnished with costly plate; dwellings, storehouses, and workshops, suited to the wants of a growing colony; broad lands, encircling meadows, forests, streams, orchards, and cultured fields, with cattle, sheep, and horses, grazing on a “thousand hills,” and game in every glade; and above all, a faith that could scoop up whole tribes of savages, dazzling them with the symbols of religion, and impressing them with the conviction that submission to the padres was obedience to God.