66 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



the interior range states and the "rodeo" has not 

 been lost in the "round-up." 



Although the padres were the founders of Cali- 

 fornia agriculture because they entered at oiice on 

 the production of foods for the sustenance of them- 

 selves, their military guards and their Indian wards, 

 and although they gathered huge possessions of live- 

 stock and grains, grew many fruits and made much 

 wine, their direct influence on the plans and practices 

 of the American pioneers consisted of the demonstra- 

 tions of the success of various fruits in their mission 

 gardens. Mission farming and stock-growing had 

 been destroyed about twenty years before American 

 occupation by the secularization of the vast area of 

 mission lands, ownership of which was transferred 

 by grant to unclerical persons. These individuals 

 had learned much of their agriculture from the pre- 

 ceding experience of the padres and they neither 

 increased the products nor improved the husbandry 

 of their teachers. Mission agriculture :at the coming 

 of the Americans consisted of remnantsof the padres' 

 gardening within the mission walls, for many of the 

 establishments had been abandoned and were falling 

 into ruin. There was enough land remaining in 

 charge of the padres at some of the missions clearly 

 to show the success of many kinds of fruits, although 

 their apparent ignorance of propagation, except by 

 seeds or cuttings, and of the relations of tillage to 

 moisture conservation and plant thrift, either by 

 irrigation or rainfall, made them rude gardeners. 

 Of the mission fruits of which the cuttings were 



