286 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
One of these was located at each mission. Their duties osten¬ 
sibly were to farm them for the benefit of the converts, in order 
to allow the Padres their whole time for their spiritual labors. 
But the actual object of this measure was to bring the income 
and property of the missions within the grasp of the hungry 
leaches of the Californian Government. For, immediately after 
the appointment of these officers their wants became pressing, 
and they began to send orders for hides, &c., to the Adminis- 
tradores, which were uniformly honored and passed to the credit 
of the missions. 
Thirty thousand hides and as many arobas of tallow, had 
been the annual export of this country ; but now, a slaughter 
of the animals commenced, which surpassed the annual in¬ 
crease; and the Padres encouraged the defrauded Indians at 
the yearly branding, to let many go unmarked and run wild, 
in anticipation of the approaching period, when tyranny would 
drive them from their homes to the wilderness. The effects 
of these measures were to decrease the number of cattle and 
the amount of the products of the missions, paralyze the in¬ 
dustry, deteriorate the morals of the whole community, and 
introduce in the place of the mild and paternal government of 
the Padres, the oppressive anarchy of a weak and cruel mili¬ 
tary despotism; the more despicable in itself, as it proceeded 
from a source where liberty and equality was the theory, and 
slavery and robbery the practice of the governing class. 
In the year 1836, a quarrel arose between the Mexican Go¬ 
vernor at Monterey, and a custom-house officer by the name of 
Juan Baptiste Alvarado, in regard to the division oi certain bribes 
which had been paid to the officers by the supercargo of a for¬ 
eign ship, as a remuneration for entering upon the government 
books only half of the cargo, and admitting the remainder for a 
certain sum in specie and goods, paid to themselves; and the first 
result of the difficulty was a revolutionary movement under 
Alvarado and Graham, as I have heretofore related. But it is 
necessary here to add that, after the surrender of the Mexican 
authorities, the foreigners and Californian Spaniards assembled 
