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Updated: May 19, 2025
Among the ruins of San Luis Obispo, in 1842, De Mofras found the oldest Spanish priest then left in California, who, after sixty years of unremitting toil, was then reduced to such abject poverty that he was forced to sleep on a hide, drink from a horn, and feed upon strips of meat dried in the sun.
For the erection of nearly all the mission buildings it was necessary to bring to the sites chosen, beams cut on mountains eight or ten leagues away, and to teach the Indians to burn lime, cut stone, and make bricks. "Around the mission," De Mofras continues, "are the huts of the neophytes, and the dwellings of some white colonists.
De Quatrefages then proceeds to show how, with respect to American tribes, Robertson is quoted while D'Orbigny is passed in silence, even though he has by the testimony of many authors disproved the statements of Robertson; how Baegert's negative and sweeping statements in regard to the California tribes are accepted, while the very specific testimony of De Mofras in regard both to the fact and to the nature of their worship is rejected.
Mofras gives the number of Indians in 1842 as five hundred, but an official report of 1844 gives only one hundred. The Mission retained the ranches of Santa Isabel and El Cajon until 1844-1845, and then, doubtless, they were sold or rented in accordance with the plans of Pio Pico. To-day nothing but the fachada of the church remains, and that has recently been braced or it would have fallen.
The best account left us of the mission establishment in its palmy days is that given by De Mofras in his careful record of travel and exploration along the Pacific Coast; and often quoted as this has been, we still cannot do better here than to translate some portions of it anew.
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