Now at Dominican Convent, Mission San Jose.] [Illustration: RAWHIDE FASTENING OF MISSION BELL, AND WORM-EATEN BEAM.] At midnight they halted, and a special messenger overtook them with news which led the governor to return at once to San Gabriel with his ten soldiers.

He ordered the procession to proceed, however, found the San Buenaventura Mission, and there await his arrival.

Serra accordingly went forward, and on the twenty-ninth arrived at "Assumpta." Here, the next day, on the feast of Easter, they pitched their tents, "erected a large cross, and prepared an altar under a shade of evergreens," where the venerable Serra, now soon to close his life-work, blessed the cross and the place, solemnized mass, preached a sermon to the soldiers on the Resurrection of Christ, and formally dedicated the Mission to God, and placed it under the patronage of St.Joseph.
In the earlier part of the last century the Mission began to grow rapidly.

Padres Francisco Dumetz and Vicente de Santa Maria, who had been placed in charge of the Mission from the first, were gladdened by many accessions, and the Mission flocks and herds also increased rapidly.

Indeed, we are told that "in 1802 San Buenaventura possessed finer herds of cattle and richer fields of grain than any of her contemporaries, and her gardens and orchards were visions of wealth and beauty." On his second visit to the California coast, Vancouver, when anchored off Santa Barbara, traded with Padre Santa Maria of San Buenaventura for a flock of sheep and as many vegetables as twenty mules could carry.
It is to Vancouver, on this voyage, that we owe the names of a number of points on the California coast, as, for instance, Points Sal, Argueello Felipe, Vicente, Dumetz, Fermin, and Lasuen.
In 1795 there was a fight between the neophyte and gentile Indians, the former killing two chiefs and taking captive several of the latter.