hundred
years ago, when the country was first settled by the Spaniards. They
named all the places they settled, after saints; and the first thing
they did in every place was to build a church, and get the Indians to
come and be baptized, and learn to pray. They did not call their
settlements towns at first, only Missions; and they had at one time
twenty-one of these Missions on the California coast, all the way up
from San Diego to Monterey; and there were more than thirty thousand
Indians in them, all being taught to pray and to work, and some of them
to read and write. They were very good men, those first Spanish
missionaries in California. There are still alive some Indians who
recollect these times. They are very old, over a hundred years old; but
they remember well about these things.

Most of the principal California towns of which you have read in your
geographies were begun in this way. San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis
Obispo, San Rafael, San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles,--all of these
were first settled by the missionaries, and by the soldiers and officers
of the army who came to protect the missionaries against the savages.
Los Angeles was named by them after the Virgin Mary. The Spanish name
was very long, "Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles,"--that means, "Our
Lady the Queen of the Angels." Of course this was quite too long to use
every day; so it soon got cut down to simply "Los Angeles," or "The
Angels,"--a name which often amuses travellers in Los Angeles to-day,
because the people who live there are not a bit more like angels than
other people; and that, as we all know, is very unlike indeed. Near Los
Angeles is San Gabriel, only about fifteen miles away. In the olden
time, fifteen miles was not thought any distance at all; people were
neighbors who lived only fifteen miles apart.

There are a great many interesting stories about the first settlement of
San Gabriel, and the habits and customs of the Indians there. They were
a very polite people to each other, and used to train their children in
some respects very carefully. If a child were sent to bring water to an
older person, and he tasted it on the way, he was made to throw the
water out and go and bring fresh water; when two grown-up persons were
talking together, if a child ran between them he was told that he had
done an uncivil thing, and would be punished if he did it again. These
are only specimens of their rules for polite behavior. Th