All these buildings were plastered with stucco that gleamed marble white in the sun, all roofed with the uniform red, soft-tinted tiles. It was a finished enterprise, to the last detail of convenience for that day, and fashioned and molded in the marvelous faith and perseverance of its builders out of the very earth on which it stood. Even a fountain was tossing a sparkling jet high among the greenery in the quadrangle that cornered between mission building and the padres' walk under the shady arcade.
The village where the neophytes lived was near the church, and close beside it the burying ground where they found rest when their struggles with civilization were at end. Many white crosses in this little field witnessed that death was a heavy tolltaker even in that scene of serenity and peace.
These Indian cabins were built of sun-dried bricks, roofed with straw thatch, arranged in neat order, mainly, with a few scattering ones as if of dissenters spreading about the edges. Poor as they appeared by contrast with the white magnificence of the mission buildings, they were luxurious to a people who had roamed almost unsheltered for centuries. It is doubtful whether the earth contained human beings of meaner accomplishments and intelligence than the California Indians were when the Spanish padres came. The never-ending marvel of it is that the priests accomplished so much with them in so short a flight of time.
But to all of this, certainly, John Miller, or Juan
