280 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC 
of theories for alleviation, which the world must adopt before 
a freezing hand can be warmed or a hungry mouth filled. 
But they had bared their hearts to the arrow of the savage 
and gone out to the theatre of personal labor, driving before 
them domestic animals bearing seed-grain, the plough, the 
axe, the spinning-wheel and the loom, gathering the stupid 
wandering Indians into communities, rearing the edifices of 
Christianity and the family condition on the shore of that 
great ocean girded with heathenism and wretchedness, opening 
its unploughed plains and training them to yield their increase to 
nourish the body—and from the garner of Heaven drawing man¬ 
na for the soul. They did not teach religion only and at all times, 
and rely on that as a nutriment for the rearing and comfort of 
the whole man. On the contrary, they recognized in the human 
being a nature allied to matter as well as spirit ; with faculties 
which connect him as a material existence with his material 
abode, and powers of mind which were made to teach him 
his relations to the material world, as well as those which 
raise the hand of religious faith to the skies, to seize the 
hope of the after world. Like knowing and reasoning, as 
well as pious men, they cared for the bodies as well as the 
souls of those whom they went to convert to Christianity. 
And in bringing the Californian savages into that industry 
which must always accompany true virtue and piety, the 
labor of the converts produced in that climate, where so little 
is required to sustain them during unproductive seasons, a vast 
amount of surplus wealth. This the Padres alone were capa¬ 
ble of throwing into the market; and consequently, at the 
period just spoken of, the business of the Californias received 
its origin, its character and impulses from them. Society from 
them took its form and its tone; and the Government of the 
country was as mild, wise and just, as these unpretending 
men who directed its action. The golden age was this of the 
Californias. The Indians in the whole of Lower, and that 
part of Upper California which lies between the first range 
of mountains and the sea, and extending from San Diego to 
