MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._
Obey my word, O Ten-ie-ya, and your people shall be many as the blades of grass, and none shall dare to bring war unto Ah-wah-nee. But look you ever, my son, against the white horsemen of the great plains beyond, for once they have crossed the western mountains, your tribe will scatter as the dust before the desert wind, and never come together again.
San Juan, Aunt Phoebe, is one of the places where there is an old Mission. People in this country (California) think a great deal of them. I've remarked to Ephraim, "Many's the time," says I, "that the Missions seem to do more real good than the churches. They get hold of the people better, somehow. I'll be real glad to set me down in one, and I do hope they'll have some real lively hymns to kind of cheer us up."
ALBERTA LAWRENCE, in _The Travels of Phoebe Ann._
In proper California fashion we made our nooning by the roadside, pulling up under the shade of a hospitable sycamore and turning Sorreltop out to graze. We drew water from a traveling little river close at hand, made a bit of camp-fire with dry sticks that lay about, and in half an hour were partaking of chops and potatoes and tea to the great comfort of our physical nature.
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS, in _A Pala Pilgrimage, The Travel Magazine._
Yellow-white the Mission gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother; and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and canyons of mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent, insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros.
MARAH ELLIS RYAN, in _For the Soul of Rafael._
The missions should be thought of today as they were at their best, when, after thirty years of struggle and hardship, they had attained the height of their usefulness, which was followed by thirty years of increase and prosperity, material as well as spiritual--the proud outcome of so humble a beginning--before their final passing away.