DON GUILLERMO HARTNELL LOST CONFIDENCE IN ALL OF THE INVENTORIES DON CARLOS CASTRO HAD COMPILED: Dakin’s ‘The Lives of William Hartnell,’ page 238

+++  Pio Pico delayed so long in retiring from supreme command at San Luis Rey that el visitador finally came to a decision (August 1): “Up to now I have taken all the smooth, prudent, measures that I could in order to avoid the necessity of taking recourse to force; but a summons must not be sent, by an armed guard who will conduct Pico to court.”

When Don Pio appeared before the prefect at Los Angeles to account for his dilatoriness, he made ugly accusations against el visitador.  How humiliating Hartnell felt this to be, that he must waste time defending himself against unfounded accusations, when so much was crying to be done in the reform of mission affairs!

Excitement ran high among the Indians at San Luis Rey when the finally were summoned to meet with el visitador and el administrador for a settlement of their affairs.  The diario reports from the mission, on August 9, that “many more people were assembled today than on any previous occasion.”  Don Pio was publicly repudiated, and Hartnell entrusted to carry all Indians’ claims straight to the Governor.

Before leaving San Luis Rey, Don Carlos Castro went with Andres Pico, brother of Pio, to take inventory at the mission ranchos of Pala, Temecula, and San Jacinto.  Discrepencies between Castro’s reports of 1839 and 1840 had led Hartnell to suspect his own assistant of in on kill, of conniving with the Picos to secure mission property for himself.  Says Hartnell bitterly:

‘From the mayordomo of San Jacinto and from the statement of some Indians from here I found out that Don Carlos never went to San Jacinto and consequently, that he never counted the cattle of San Luis.  He put down anything he wanted to, or what the administrator told him there should be.  So he deceived me, but that is not the only fault he committed in the discharge of the Commission that  the government entrusted to him.’

The proved dereliction at San Luis Rey undermined el visitador’s confidence in all of the ranch inventories which Don Carlos had compiled, traveling the length of California three times in one year.  With old Father Duran, Don Guillermo now bemoaned “these labyrinths of California” in which they both were lost.