"Me fecit ano di 1818 Manvel Vargas, Lima. Mision de Sn
Luis Obispo De La Nueba California." This latter is a circumferential
panel about midway between the top and bottom of the bell. On the middle
bell we read the same inscription, while there is none on the third.
This latter was cast in San Francisco, from two old bells which
were broken.

From a painting the old San Luis Obispo church is seen to have been
raised up on a stone and cement foundation. The corridor was without the
arches that are elsewhere one of the distinctive features, but plain
round columns, with a square base and topped with a plain square
moulding, gave support to the roof beams, on which the usual red-tiled
roof was placed.

The _fachada_ of the church retreats some fifteen or twenty feet from
the front line of the corridors. The monastery has been "restored," even
as has the church, out of all resemblance to its own honest original
self. The adobe walls are covered with painted wood, and the tiles have
given way to shingles, just like any other modern and commonplace house.
The building faces the southeast. The altar end is at the northwest. To
the southwest are the remains of a building of boulders, brick, and
cement, exactly of the same style as the asistencia building of Santa
Margarita. It seems as if it might have been built by the same hands.
Possibly in the earlier days Santa Margarita was a _vista_ of San Luis,
rather than of San Miguel, though it is generally believed that it was
under the jurisdiction of the latter.

CHAPTER XV

SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS

The story of Bucareli's determination to found a presidio at San
Francisco, and Anza's march with the colonists for it from Sonora, has
already been recounted. When Serra and Galvez were making their original
plans for the establishment of the three first Missions of Alta
California, Serra expressed his disappointment that St. Francis was
neglected by asking: "And for our founder St. Francis there is no
Mission?" To which Galvez replied: "If St. Francis desires a Mission,
let him show us his harbor and he shall have one." It therefore seemed
providential that when Portola, Pages, and Crespi, in 1769, saw the Bay
of Monterey they did not recognize it, and were thus led on further
north, where the great Bay of San Francisco was soon afterwards
discovered and reasonably well surveyed.

Palou eventually established the Mission October 9, 1776. None of the
Indians were present to