Leaving San Diego and traveling northward along "El Camino Real," the
highway which leads from mission to mission, we reach San Luis Rey,
"King of the Missions," as it is sometimes called. Its church is the
largest of all those erected by the padres, being one hundred and sixty
feet long, fifty-eight feet wide, and sixty feet high. Its one square,
two-story tower has a chime of bells, the sweet clear tones of which
reached our ears while we were yet miles from the mission. Counting the
arches of the long corridor, we find there are two hundred and
fifty-six. This mission became very wealthy. At one time it had a
baptized Indian population of several thousand, owned twenty-four
thousand cattle, ten thousand horses, and one hundred thousand sheep,
and harvested fourteen thousand bushels of grain a year.
Its prosperity was due in a great measure to good Padre Peyri, who had
charge of it from its beginning. Many years afterwards, as we shall see,
the padres were ordered by the Mexican government to leave their
missions, the wealth they had gathered, and the Indians they had taught
and cared for.
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