pure pink, with pale blue shadows,
changing at sunset to intensest purple. Color is rife in California.

The mission consisted of a large white adobe church, a long line of
buildings adjoining in which lived the padre and the Mexicans, and
a number of little houses and cabins, some of adobe, but the greater
number of straw and rushes, which sheltered the Indians. These little
huts were scattered around irregularly on all sides; and to them the
inmates were wending their way from their daily toil in the fields and
among the horses and cattle, and from all the occupations of a pastoral
life. Nothing more beautiful could well be imagined than the picture the
mission made in the rosy light of sunset--crowds of savages, children of
nature gathered together to receive the rich blessings bestowed on them
by the fathers, deriving their authority from the Church whose symbol,
the great white building, towering above all else of man's work, stood
like a sentinel guarding the religious life of the mission.

Father Uria had been pacing to and fro in front of the mission for more
than an hour, waiting impatiently for the expedition from Mexico, which
had been expected two days before, its regular time of arrival. It was
not at all unusual for these bands to be delayed three or four days, and
that without meeting with any accident on the way; but news from home
was infrequent to a degree that made an expedition to the province
awaited with almost unreasonable impatience. Mail, as well as everything
else, came usually by sea; but to send letters by the desert route was
by no means rare.

Father Uria was known to all his fraternity in the country for his
eccentricity. He was a small, rather stout man, about sixty years of
age, every one of which had left its mark upon him; for his had been a
life of toil surpassed by but few, even among those self-denying workers
in the Lord's vineyard. But the hardships of his life had not quenched
his jovial spirits, which were, indeed, irrepressible. A laughing
greeting for every one he met, Mexican or Indian, was his habit, one
that might have begotten a measure of contempt in the beholder, had the
Father not possessed a sternness, latent for the most part, it is
true, but which could, on occasion, be evoked to prop up the apparently
tottering respect due him. Father Uria was fond, too, of company,
not only for its own sake, but because it gave him an excuse for the
pleasures of the table, and,