ished  with  lashes.  Some  attempts  had  been  made,  particularly
by  Governor  Felipe  de  Neve  and  afterwards  by  Governor  Pages,
to  qualify  and  restrain  the  hideous  cruelty;  but  they  had  failed;
and  the  church  triumphed.*  The  Indians  were  taught  to  believe
that  the  missionaries  were  superior  beings,  in  direct  communica-
tion with  God,  who  could  do  no  wrong;  and  the  lesson  was
enforced  with  floggings  in  this  life  and  the  dread  of  everlasting
torments  in  the  life  to  come.  There  was  no  instruction  what-
ever which  was  calculated  to  remove  their  ignorance;  and  the
most  useful  and  necessary  arts,  not  excepting  even  the  common-
est surgery  of  the  villages  of  Europe,  were  entirely  neglected.*

Vancouver  spoke  of  the  conduct  of  the  fathers  as  mild  and
kind-hearted  and  as  never  failing  to  attach  to  their  interests  the
affections  of  the  natives;  but  at  the  same  time  he  was  astonished
to  observe  how  few  advantages  the  Indians  themselves  had  de-
rived from  their  conversion.  While  he  described  the  neophytes
as  tractable  and  affectionate  on  the  one  hand,  he  pronounced
them  so  utterly  stolid  and  brutalized  on  the  other  hand,  that  the
kindness  of  the  missionaries  was  thrown  away  upon  them.  It
seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  there  might  be  some
fundamental  fault  in  the  quality  and  manner  of  the  kindness,
which  would  have  explained  the  astonishing  contrast  he  noticed.*
On  his  second  visit  in  1793,  he  witnessed  the  extraordinary
attachment  of  the  Indians  of  San  Buenaventura  to  their  mis-
sionary. Father  Vicente  Santa  Maria;  but  he  could  not  see,  in
their  solicitude  for  their  pastor's  safety  when  he  embarked  for  a
short  voyage  or  in  their  rejoicing  for  his  safe  return,  any  apti-
tude for  education,  instruction  or  civilization.*

Galiano  and  Valdez,  who  visited  California  about  the  same
time  as  Vancouver,  represented  the  missionaries  from  the  Span-
ish point  of  view  and  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  the  suavity
of  their  treatment  and  the  diligence  and  charitable  pains,  which
they  devoted  to  the  alleviation  of  the  condition  of  the  natives.
