seful to
the community by spinning, weaving, and similar occupations. These
dungeons are opened two or three times a-day, but only to allow the
prisoners to pass to and from the church. I have occasionally seen the
poor girls rushing out eagerly to breathe the fresh air, and driven
immediately into the church like a flock of sheep, by an old ragged
Spaniard armed with a stick. After mass, they are in the same manner
hurried back to their prisons. Yet, notwithstanding all the care of the
ghostly fathers, the feet of some of these uninviting fair ones were
cumbered with bars of iron, the penal consequence, as I was informed, of
detected transgression. Only on their marriage are these cloistered
virgins allowed to issue from their confinement and associate with their
own people in the barracks.

Three times a-day a bell summons the Indians to their meals, which are
prepared in large kettles, and served out in portions to each family.
They are seldom allowed meat; their ordinary, and not very wholesome
food, consisting of wheaten flour, maize, peas and beans, mixed
together, and boiled to a thick soup.

The mission of Santa Clara contains fifteen hundred male Indians, of
whom about one-half are married. All these men are governed by three
monks, and guarded by four soldiers and a subaltern officer. Since this
force is found sufficient, it follows either that the Indians of the
mission are happier than their free countrymen, or that, no way superior
to the domestic animals, they are chained by their instincts to the
place where their food is provided. The first supposition can hardly be
well founded. Hard labour every day, Sundays only excepted, when labour
is superseded by prayer; corporal chastisement, imprisonment, and
fetters on the slightest demonstration of disobedience; unwholesome
nourishment, miserable lodging, deprivation of all property, and of all
the enjoyments of life:--these are not boons which diffuse content. Many
indeed of these unfortunate victims prove, by their attempts to escape,
that their submission is involuntary; but the soldiers, as I have before
observed, generally hunt them from their place of refuge, and bring them
back to undergo the severe punishment their transgression has incurred.
To the most stupid apathy, then, must the patience of these Indians be
ascribed; and in this, their distinguishing characteristic, they exceed
every race of men I have ever known, not excepting the degraded nativ