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to feed on hare and snipe, on duck and trout.
The fathers taught him how to cook his food; so that in place of gobbling up his roots and reptiles, like a beast, he learnt to dry his seed on stones and bake his water-fowl in stoves.
The fathers built a church where they had fixed the cross, and in this church they hung their image of Our Lady of Carmelo.
Fields were cleared and sown with corn.
Adobe bricks were dried, and cedar trees were felled.
Between the church and glen a slope was trimmed for vines.
Pears, apples, nuts were planted in an orchard; and an olive ground was laid out, in memory of the Syrian Mount.
What said the Indians?
While the bucks looked on, their squaws, more sensitive, brought children to the friars, who gave them lessons in the White man's creed, and marked their foreheads with the White man's sign.
A convert died; the music of the spirit land was sung above his grave.
What buck had ever seen and heard such funeral rites?
The bucks came in, and asked to be baptised.
Fray Jose Maria lost no time in teaching creeds and articles.
An Indian crept into the church, and asked to be adopted by the White man's saint.
1875.
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