In 1810 the settlers at Los Angeles complained to the governor that the San Gabriel padres had dammed up the river at Cahuenga, thus cutting off their water supply; and they also stated that the padres refused to attend to the spiritual wants of their sick.  The padres offered to remove the dam if the settlers were injured thereby, and also claimed that they were always glad to attend to the sick when their own pressing duties allowed.

On January 14, 1811, Padre Francisco Dumetz, one of Serra’s original compadres, died at San Gabriel.  At this time, and since 1806, Padre Jose Maria Zalvidea, that strict martinet of padres, was in charge, and he brought the Mission up to its highest state of efficiency.  He it was who began the erection of the stone church that now remains, and the whole precinct, during his rule, rang with the busy hammer, clatter, chatter, and movement of a large number of active workers.

It was doubtless owing to the earthquake of December 8, 1812, which occurred at sunrise, that a new church was built.  The main altar was overthrown, several of the figures broken, the steeple toppled over and crashed to the ground, and the sacristy walls were badly cracked.  The padres’ house as well as all the other buildings suffered.

One of the adjuncts to San Gabriel was El Molino Viejo,—­the old mill.  Indeed there were two old mills, the first one, however, built in Padre Zalvidea’s time, in 1810 to 1812, being the one that now remains.  It is about two miles from the Mission.  It had to be abandoned on account of faulty location.  Being built on the hillside, its west main wall was the wall of the deep funnel-shaped cisterns which furnished the water head.  This made the interior damp.  Then, too, the chamber in which the water-well revolved was so low that the powerful head of water striking the horizontal wheel splashed all over the walls and worked up through the shaft holes to the mill stones and thus wet the flour.  This necessitated the constant presence of Indian women to carry away the meal to dry storerooms at the Mission where it was bolted by a hand process of their own devising.  On this account the mill was abandoned, and for several years the whole of the meal for the Mission was ground on the old-style metates.

The region adjacent to the mill was once largely inhabited by Indians, for the foreman of the mill ranch declares that he has hauled from the adjacent bluff as many stone pestles and mortars, metates and grinders as would load a four-horse wagon.

It should not be forgotten that originally the mill was roofed with red tiles made by the Indians at the Mission; but these have entirely disappeared.

It was the habit of Padre Zalvidea to send certain of his most trusted neophytes over to the islands of San Clemente and Catalina with a “bolt” or two of woven serge, made at the Mission San Gabriel, to exchange with the island Indians for their soapstone cooking vessels,—­mortars, etc.  These traders embarked from a point where Redondo now is, and started always at midnight.