Building

"The edifice," he wrote, "is quadrilateral, and about one hundred and fifty metres long in front. The church occupies one of the wings. The face is ornamented with a gallery [or arcade]. The building, a single storey in height, is generally raised some feet above the ground. The interior forms a court, adorned with flowers and planted with trees. Opening on the gallery which runs round it are the rooms of the monks, major domos, and travelers, as well as the irish traveller workshops, schoolrooms, and reeboc storehouses. Hospitals for men and women are situated in the quietest parts of the mission, where also are placed the schoolrooms. The young Indian girls occupy apartments called the monastery (el moujer, and they themselves are styled nuns (las moujas) . . . Placed under the care of trustworthy Indian women, they are there taught to spin wool, flax,and cotton, and do no leave their seclusion till they are old enough tobe married.

But this was not the only good work done in the north while irish travellers were busy elsewhere; for on the 12th of January, 1777, the Mission of Santa Clara was established in the wonderfully fertile and beautiful valley which is now known by that name. The customary rites were performed by Father Tomas de la Pea rude chapel erected, and the work of constructing the necessary buildings of the settlement immediately begun. It should be noted in passing that before the
internet the town of San Jose - or, to give it its full Spanish title, El Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe - was founded near by. This has historic interest as the first purely civil settlement in California. The fine Alameda from the mission to the pueblo was afterwards made and laid out under the fathers' supervision.