310 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
seamen, Spaniards, Creoles and Indians. The remainder of 
the population is scattered over the country ; and all are liv¬ 
ing a lewd and half civilized life. 
These mission establishments are now a sad sight to behold. 
In the days of Padres Salva Tierra and Ugarte, we have 
regarded them as the comfortable abodes of savages, whom 
those excellent men had raised from the filth, idleness and 
misery of the lowest barbarism, to the cleanliness, industry and 
happiness of a partially civilized mode of life. They were 
built upon fertile spots, separated from each other by extensive 
tracts of uninhabited wastes; little green homes, where the 
plough, the axe, the family hearth, and the altar of God, con¬ 
tributed to the comfort and dignity of human life, and so far 
as the physical obstacles in the country and the stupid nature 
of the Indians allowed, elevated the leading purposes of their 
temporal existence, and implanted in their minds a new idea 
of vast power; the idea of their Maker ; the framer of Nature 
and of themselves; which raised from the grave man’s expec¬ 
tation of future being ; and threw over that new life of beloved 
hope, the bow of His eternal promises. And for ever, yes, 
alway, while the good revert to the past, for examples of 
great devotion to the deeds of a holy benevolence, wiJl they 
point to the thirsty deserts of Lower California, and the crum¬ 
bling walls of the old missions, and speak the names of Salva 
Tierra and Ugarte. 
The government of Lower California, while administered 
by these excellent men, was patriarchal in its general features, 
and aimed at the happiness of the governed. At the expul¬ 
sion of the Jesuits from Spanish America, the Franciscans suc¬ 
ceeded to their places; but being unacquainted with the 
character of the people, their good intentions towards them 
were in a great degree thwarted by their incapacity to meet 
the duties of their station. These were succeeded by the 
Dominicans; excellent men in their way; but failing to 
equal the great founders of a system of things which they 
were called to carry out, in that broad and untiring be- 
