One of these pickets in a mission has a double object; besides keeping
the Indians in subjection, they run post with a monthly correspondence,
or with any extraordinaries that may be necessary for government.
"All the missions in this California are under the charge of religious
men of the order of San Francisco. At the present time their number is
twenty-seven, most of them of an advanced age. Each mission has one of
these fathers for its administrator, and he holds absolute authority.
The tilling of the ground, the gathering of the harvest, the
slaughtering of cattle, the weaving, and everything that concerns the
mission, is under the direction of the fathers, without any other
person interfering in any way whatever, so that, if any one mission has
the good fortune to be superintended by an industrious and discreet
padre, the Indians disfrute in abundance all the real necessaries of
life; at the same time the nakedness and misery of any one mission are
a palpable proof of the inactivity of its director. The missions extend
their possessions from one extremity of the territory to the other, and
have made the limits of one mission from those of another.
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