also stated that the padres refused to
attend to the spiritual wants of their sick. The padres offered to
remove the dam if the settlers were injured thereby, and also claimed
that they were always glad to attend to the sick when their own pressing
duties allowed.

On January 14, 1811, Padre Francisco Dumetz, one of Serra's original
compadres, died at San Gabriel. At this time, and since 1806, Padre
Jose Maria Zalvidea, that strict martinet of padres, was in charge, and
he brought the Mission up to its highest state of efficiency. He it was
who began the erection of the stone church that now remains, and the
whole precinct, during his rule, rang with the busy hammer, clatter,
chatter, and movement of a large number of active workers.

It was doubtless owing to the earthquake of December 8, 1812, which
occurred at sunrise, that a new church was built. The main altar was
overthrown, several of the figures broken, the steeple toppled over and
crashed to the ground, and the sacristy walls were badly cracked. The
padres' house as well as all the other buildings suffered.

One of the adjuncts to San Gabriel was _El Molino Viejo_,--the old mill.
Indeed there were _two_ old mills, the first one, however, built in
Padre Zalvidea's time, in 1810 to 1812, being the one that now remains.
It is about two miles from the Mission. It had to be abandoned on
account of faulty location. Being built on the hillside, its west main
wall was the wall of the deep funnel-shaped cisterns which furnished the
water head. This made the interior damp. Then, too, the chamber in which
the water-well revolved was so low that the powerful head of water
striking the horizontal wheel splashed all over the walls and worked up
through the shaft holes to the mill stones and thus wet the flour. This
necessitated the constant presence of Indian women to carry away the
meal to dry storerooms at the Mission where it was bolted by a hand
process of their own devising. On this account the mill was abandoned,
and for several years the whole of the meal for the Mission was ground
on the old-style metates.

The region adjacent to the mill was once largely inhabited by Indians,
for the foreman of the mill ranch declares that he has hauled from the
adjacent bluff as many stone pestles and mortars, metates and grinders
as would load a four-horse wagon.

It should not be forgotten that originally the mill was roofed with red
tiles made by the Indians at the Mission;