278 Recreations of a Sportsman 



cattle, 300 horses, 1200 sheep, but in 1793 its 

 population, its converts and their descendants 

 had dwindled to a pitiful 43. At Purissinia, 

 about six miles from the present San Antonio, 

 792 natives were baptized, and in 1762 it owned 

 300 horses, 2200 sheep; yet in 1793 its popula- 

 tion amounted to but 51 souls. San Jose bap- 

 tized 1054; San Juan 847; population in 1793, 

 34. San Francisco mission baptized 815; popu- 

 lation in 1782, 80; and so on the dreary story 

 of degeneracy might be told through all these 

 missions, once rich with large flocks. They had 

 become, so far as their importance w r as con- 

 cerned, virtual ruins in the eighteenth century, 

 yet when I last saw them the Little San Antonio 

 where the friars angled and sat in the cool of 

 the evenings, still flowed placidly on beneath the 

 pecans. 



