* * * * * * "Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still, And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from the hill." [4] Around the church were built storehouses, workshops, granaries, barracks for the soldiers,--in short, everything necessary for comfort and security. Each mission was at once fortress, refuge, church, and town. The little town grew in time more and more to resemble its fellows in old Spain. Bull-fights and other festivals were held in the _plaza_, or public square, in front of the _presidio_, or governor's house, and the long, low, whitewashed _hacienda_, or tavern. About the mission arose a great farm. Vines and olives were planted, and often long avenues of shade-trees. The level lands were sown to barley and oats; great herds of cattle and horses roamed over the hills. The sale of wine, and especially of hides, brought in each year an increasing revenue. The poor, struggling missions became rich. The commanders kept up a dignity worthy of the representatives of the Spanish king, though often they had little enough to command. It is said that one of them, wishing to fire a salute in honor of some foreign vessel, first sent on board to borrow powder. In the words of Bret Harte, with the _comandante_ the days "slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring feasts and saint's days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport ship, and rarer foreign vessels, were the mere details of his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of the _presidio_ and mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of the continent had to them no suggestiveness. It was that glorious Indian summer of California history, that bland, indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of American conquest." [Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--Interior of Chapel.] The Indians were usually gathered about the mission by force or by persuasion. Being baptized with holy water, they were taught to build houses, raise grain, and take care of cattle. In place of their savage rites, they learned to count their beads and say their prayers. They learned also to work, and were pious and generally contented. But these California Indians, at the best, were far inferior to those of the East. "When attached to the mission," Mr. Soule says, "they were an industrious, contented, and numerous class, though, indeed, in intelligence and manly spirit they were little better than the beasts, after all."