It is of incalculably greater benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and education,--which we, in our assumed superiority, call crude and old-fashioned,--all their rude notions of sociology, all their errors and mistakes, the work of the Franciscan Fathers was glorified by unselfish aim, high motive and constant and persistent endeavor to bring their heathen wards into a knowledge of saving grace. It was a brave and heroic endeavor. It is easy enough to find fault, to criticize, to carp, but it is not so easy to _do_. These men _did_! They had a glorious purpose which they faithfully pursued. They aimed high and achieved nobly. The following pages recite both their aims and their achievements, and neither can be understood without a thrilling of the pulses, a quickening of the heart's beats, and a stimulating of the soul's ambitions. This volume pretends to nothing new in the way of historical research or scholarship. It is merely an honest and simple attempt to meet a real and popular demand for an unpretentious work that shall give the ordinary tourist and reader enough of the history of the Missions to make a visit to them of added interest, and to link their history with that of the other Missions founded elsewhere in the country during the same or prior epochs of Mission activity. If it leads others to a greater reverence for these outward and visible signs of the many and beautiful graces that their lives developed in the hearts of the Franciscan Fathers--their founders and builders--and gives the information needed, its purpose will be more than fulfilled. In most of its pages it is a mere condensation of the author's _In and Out of the Old Missions of California,_ to which book the reader who desires further and more detailed information is respectfully referred. [Illustration: Signature: George Wharton James] PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, April, 1913. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION II. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE MISSIONS OF LOWER CALIFORNIA (MEXICO) AND ALTA CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES) III. THE MISSIONS FOUNDED BY PADRE JUNIPERO SERRA IV. THE MISSIONS FOUNDED BY PADRE FERMIN FRANCISCO LASUEN V. THE FOUNDING OF SANTA INÉS, SAN RAFAEL AND SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO VI. THE INDIANS AT THE COMING OF THE PADRES VII. THE INDIANS UNDER THE PADRES VIII. THE SECULARIZATION OF THE MISSIONS IX. SAN DIEGO DE ALCALÁ X. SAN CARLOS BORROMEO XI. THE PRESIDIO CHURCH AT MONTEREY XII. SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA XIII. SAN GABRIEL, ARCÁNGEL XIV. SAN LUIS OBISPO DE TOLOSA XV. SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS XVI. SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO XVII. SANTA CLARA DE ASIS XVIII. SAN BUENAVENTURA XIX. SANTA BARBARA XX. LA PURÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN XXI. SANTA CRUZ XXII. LA SOLEDAD