272 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
Lower California are less fortunate. Their ship, the San Carlos, 
is allowed by its unworthy commander to drift ashore, in the 
Port Mansanillo, a fine harbor lying some distance south from 
San Bias; and the poor friars, left to shift for themselves, are 
compelled to toil over three hundred leagues of rough, path¬ 
less, uninhabited coast along the ocean and gulf, till they find 
themselves on the coast of Senora opposite to Loretto. They 
cross the gulf to Loretto, thither the San Carlos follows 
them in the month of August, having been eight months at 
sea, between two ports which are now but five or six days’ 
sail apart. 
The reinforcement to Upper California enables the presid¬ 
ing Padre to found a new mission which he dedicates to San 
Antonio de Padua. This station is built among the green 
hills of Santa Lucia, about eight leagues from the Pacific coast 
and twenty from Monterey. The grounds are broken and the 
seed sown; but a blighting and untimely frost comes and the 
total loss of the wheat is threatened. The Indians are dis¬ 
heartened and still more so the Padres, who anticipate with 
keen forebodings the loss of their bread. They send the Chris¬ 
tian Indians to the woods to gather seeds, roots, fruits, &c., for 
their subsistence, as in former times has been their custom. 
The Padres strengthen their own and the Indians’ faith, by a 
firm reliance on their patron saint; and to conciliate his high¬ 
est favor, they resolve to celebrate his Novena with all their 
converts. At the same time they take the more business-like 
precaution of irrigating the blighted field ; and in a few 
days, such is the efficacy of the water, and still more, as they 
believe, their prayers, that the resuscitated grain field is 
seen springing into new life. At the end of the Novena, the 
whole field is covered with beauty and promise, and at harvest 
yields more abundantly than was ever before known. This 
encourages the new converts, and kindles the gratitude of the 
Padres. Meanwhile new efforts are resolved on in San Diego; 
and on the tenth of August, Padre Pedro Cambon and Padre 
Angel Somera, with a detachment of ten soldiers and the re- 
