set with wine and delicate confections, their hands concealed in their
wide brown sleeves, but their unmatched physiognomies--the one lean and
jovial, the other plump and resigned--alight with the same smile of
welcome. Father Abella mentioned them as his coadjutor Father Martin
Landaeta, and their guest Father Jose Uria of San Jose; and then the
three, with the scant rites of genuine hospitality, applied themselves
to the tickling of palates long unused to ambrosial living. Responding
ingenuously to the glow of their home-made wines, they begged Rezanov
to accept the Mission, burn it, plunder it, above all, to plan his own
day.

"I hope that I am to see every detail of your great work," replied the
diplomatic guest of honor. "But at your own leisure. Meanwhile, I beg
that you will order one of your Indians to bring in the little presents
I venture to offer as a token of my respect. You may have heard that
the presents of his Imperial Majesty were refused by the Mikado of
Japan. I reserved many of them for possible use in our own
possessions, particularly a piece of cloth of gold. This I had
intended for our church at New Archangel, but finding the priests there
more in need of punishment than reward, I concluded to bring it here
and offer it as a manifest of my admiration for what the great
Franciscan Order of the Most Holy Church of Rome has accomplished in
the Californias. Have I been too presumptuous?"

The priests all wore the eager expressions of children.

"Could we not see them first?" asked Father Landaeta of his superior;
and Father Abella sent a servant with an order to unload the horse and
bring in the presents.

Not a vestige of reserve lingered. Priests and guests sat about the
table eating and drinking and chatting as were they old friends
reunited, and Rezanov extracted much of the information he desired.
The white population--"gente de razon"--of Alta California, the
peculiar province of the Franciscans--the Jesuits having been the first
to invade Baja California, and with little success--numbered about two
thousand, the Christianized Indians about twenty thousand. There were
nineteen Missions and four Presidial districts--San Diego, close to the
border of Baja California, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco.
Each Mission had an immense grant of land, or rancho--generally fifteen
miles square--for the raising of live stock, agricultural necessities,
and the grape. At the Presidio of