Robinson speaks thus of the Mission and its friar: "Padre Pedro Cabot, the present missionary director, I found to be a fine, noble-looking man, whose manner and whole deportment would have led one to suppose he had been bred in the courts of Europe, rather than in the cloister.

Everything was in the most perfect order: the Indians cleanly and well dressed, the apartments tidy, the workshops, granaries, and storehouses comfortable and in good keeping." [Illustration: RUINS Of MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA.] [Illustration: DUTTON HOTEL, JOLON.

On the old stage route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, near Mission San Antonio de Padua.] [Illustration: RUINED CORRIDORS AT SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA.] In 1834 Cabot retired to give place to Padre Jesus Maria Vasquez del Mercado, one of the newly arrived Franciscans from Zacatecas.

In this year the neophyte population had dwindled to 567, and five years later Visitador Hartwell found only 270 living at the Mission and its adjoining ranches.

It is possible, however, that there were fully as many more living at a distance of whom he gained no knowledge, as the official report for 1840 gives 500 neophytes.
Manuel Crespo was the comisionado for secularization in 1835, and he and Padre Mercado had no happy times together.