The California padres and their missions Author:Charles Francis Saunders Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: San Antonio De Pala And Its Hanging Garden fip%ADRE Peyri's evangelical appetite was by no means yp appeased by gathering in only those Gentiles who dwelt wit... more »hin easy reach of his Mission San Luis Rey. The mountain country twenty miles to the eastward was also well populated, but the people were shy of coming to the Mission; so, in 1816, Peyri, Mahomet-wise, went to the mountain, founding in the beautiful little valley of Pala,1 along the upper waters of the San Luis Rey River, a Mission outpost which he dedicated to the Paduan St. Anthony. Here he stationed his companion friar, and within a couple of years, it is said, a thousand converts were added to the Mission roll. This establishment was never officially a Mission, but simply an appanage of San Luis Rey — an asistencia, in Spanish parlance. Nevertheless, it was in effect a Mission, with its church, its Padres' quarters, its corrals and storehouses and orchards; and in its tall campanario or belfry — still intact, built to itself apart from the church — it possesses a feature unique in Mission architecture, if not the world's. After secularization, Pala, of course, went the way of all, and its buildings fell into decay, although the occasional visits of a secular priest, and the continued interest of Indians inhabiting the hills roundabout, were instrumental in keeping part of them fromentire obliteration. Then, in 1903, came a new lease of life through the transfer thither of about three hundred Indians evicted from their old-time home on Warner's Ranch; and with this accession of communicants to Pala the Catholic Church had a priest take up his permanent residence there. The land on all sides is a United States Indian Reservation; but the Church still owns in the midst an islanded acre or so which the Mission buildings a...« less