Dr. Stephen Anderson traveled from mission to mission taking orders; everywhere he met friends of DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL’s

+++  Several years had elapsed since Dr. Anderson’s last visit to the California coast.  He found other changes as striking and sad as the change in Hartnell’s prospects.  The most notable were in mission affairs, where secularization was well under way.  A decree of Governor Echeandia’s dated July 25, 1826, had authorized Indians in the districts of San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Monterey to form ‘pueblos’ and hold land under strict supervision.  This and other provisions were to be carried out by civil administrators, who already had started to enrich themselves at the expense of the church.  The padres “in sad shroud” never could be accused of such a thing, however severely they might be censured for other acts.  ++  The new system was not yet effectively in operation.  But the most enlightened Franciscans were first to see the doom of the missions, through an unfriendly legislature and secular greed.  The grand old man Peyri, at San Luis Rey, made the painful decision to leave California rather than stay to see the collapse of all he had built.  In ‘Life in California,’ Don Alfredo Robinson has affectingly described his departure, and the sorrow of the San Luis Indians at losing a loving father.  Peyri’s enemies among the civil administrators accused him of filling his pockets with gold and boarding ship with priceless church objects concealed beneath his robes.  But to those who had known him long and well this was not believable.  Hartnell, for one, refuted the accusation.  ++  As Anderson traveled from mission to mission taking orders in the old way, everywhere he met friends of Hartnell’s, padres old and young who reciprocated Don Guillermo’s loyalty to them with undying devotion to him.  Such goodwill the Scot trader recognized as priceless.  The idea came to him that it might be good business to assume Hartnell’s remaining debts and carry on the California trade in his footsteps, continuing to act in the ‘modo corriente.’  Overbalancing the debt was the prospect of enormous future profits.  The groundwork he knew to be solid. . . . +++