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It is but another instance of injustice, Fray Felipe said. For twenty years we, of the missions, have been subjected to it, and it grows. The sainted Junipero Serra invaded this land when other men feared, and at San Diego de Alcala he built the first mission of what became a chain, thus giving an empire to the world. Our mistake was that we prospered. We did the work, and others reap the advantages. They began taking out mission-lands from us, lands we had cultivated, which had formed a wilderness and which my brothers had turned into gardens and orchards. They robbed us of worldly goods. And not content with that they now are persecuting us. The mission-empire is doomed, caballero. The time is not far distant when mission roofs will fall in and walls crumble away. Some day people will look at the ruins and wonder how such a thing could come to pass.
