2S4 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
ferior, whose influence can only he to weaken the moral 
power of their superiors, and draw them off with all the force 
of physical indulgence to the confines of barbarism. They 
perceived, indeed, that freedom to their converts, from their 
paternal restraints, was only an illusive synonyme of annihi¬ 
lation ; that they would, when removed from the action of a 
superior intelligence, return to the savage state, or use their 
liberty in following their strongest instincts, which, after all 
their labors, were towards vices alike ruinous to bodily and 
moral health. The Padres, for all these causes, became dis¬ 
couraged, and made less effort for the temporal enlargement 
of their missions. The departure of their best neophytes to 
the lands assigned them by the Government, left them only 
the refractory and the ignorant to work the lands, guard ne 
herds and flocks, and manufacture the cloth, leather and wine, 
and these being encouraged by Echuandra, neglected theii 
labor, and insulted the Padres when punished for so doing. 
They even went in bodies to Echuandra and complained that 
the Padres insisted that they, the free citizens of the Mexican 
Republic, ought to cultivate the mission farms ; and the Gen¬ 
eral encouraged them in their folly. They informed him that 
the Padres withheld their rations, unless they cultivated the 
land to raise a new supply; and Echuandra assured them they 
had reason for dissatisfaction. And on one occasion, w r hen a 
Padre was insisting on obedience to these wholesome regula¬ 
tions by which they had been elevated from the most abject 
barbarism to the comforts of a partially civilized state, the 
deluded creatures threw him violently upon the ground, and 
otherwise abused him. This, Echuandra assured them, was 
an act worthy of a citizen of the Mexican Republic. 
While the Padres were thus seeing the mission plantations 
becoming covered with weeds, the buildings going to ruin, 
their influence over the converts lessening, and these, their 
spiritual children, given to drunkenness, gambling, theft, and 
lasciviousness, a party of young Friars from the Convent of 
San Fernando, in Mexico, were distributed among some of 
