turned on this theme. Long years of delay and monastic routine did not dampen the ardor of the four friends. Again and again they petitioned to be sent as missionaries to the New World, and again and again were disappointed. At last, in 1749, there assembled in Cadiz a great body of missionaries, destined chiefly for Mexico; and Serra and Palon received permission to join the band. Arriving at Cadiz, and finding two vacancies still left in the party, they pleaded warmly that Crespí and Verger be allowed to go also. At the very last moment this permission was given, and the four friends joyfully set sail in the same ship.
It is impossible at this distance of time to get any complete realization of the halo of exalted sentiment and rapture which then invested undertakings of this kind. From the highest to the lowest, the oldest to the youngest, it reached. Every art was lent to its service, every channel of expression stamped with its sign. Even on the rude atlases and charts of the day were pictures of monks embarking in ships of discovery; the Virgin herself looking on from the sky, with the motto above, "Matre Dei montravit via;" and on the ships' sails, "Unus non sufficit orbis."
In the memoir of Father Junipero, written by his friend Palon, are many interesting details of his voyage to Vera Cruz. It lasted ninety-nine days: provisions fell short; starvation threatened; terrific storms nearly wrecked the ship; but through all, Father Junipero's courage never failed. He said, "remembering the end for which they had come," he felt no fear. He performed mass each morning, and with psalms and exhortations cheered the sinking spirits of all on board.
For nineteen years after their arrival in Mexico, Father Junipero and his three friends were kept at work there, under the control of the College of San Fernando, in founding missions and preaching. On the suppression of the Jesuit Order, in 1767, and its consequent expulsion from all the Spanish dominions, it was decided to send a band of Franciscans to California, to take charge of the Jesuit missions there. These were all in Lower California, no attempt at settlement having been yet made in Upper California.
Once more the friends, glad and exultant, joined a missionary band bound to new wildernesses. They were but three now, Verger remaining behind in the College of San Fernando. The band numbered sixteen. Serra was put in charge of it, and was appointed president of all the California missions. His biographer says he received this appointment "unable to speak a single word for tears." It was not strange, on the realization of a hope so long deferred. He was now fifty-six years old; and from boyhood his longing had been to labor among the Indians on the western shores of the New World.
It was now the purpose of the Spanish Government to proceed as soon as possible to the colonization of Upper California. The passion of the Church allied itself gladly with the purpose of the State; and the State itself had among its statesmen and soldiers many men who were hardly less fervid in religion than were those sworn exclusively to the Church's service. Such an one was Joseph de Galvez, who held the office of Visitor-General and Commander, representing the person of the King, and inspecting the working of the Government in every province of the Spanish Empire. Upon him rested the responsibility of the practical organization of the first expedition into Upper California. It was he who ordered the carrying of all sorts of seeds of vegetables, grains, and flowers; everything that would grow in Old Spain he ordered to be planted in New. He ordered that two hundred head of cattle should be taken from the northernmost of the Lower California missions, and carried to the new posts. It was he also, as full of interest for chapel as for farm, who selected and packed with his own hands sacred ornaments and vessels for church ceremonies. A curious letter of his to Palon is extant, in which he says laughingly that he is a better sacristan than Father Junipero, having packed the holy vessels and ornaments quicker and better than he. There are also extant some of his original instructions to military and naval commanders which show his religious ardor and wisdom. He declares that the first object of the expedition is "to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism, to extend the dominion of the King our Lord, and to protect this peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign nations."
With no clearer knowledge than could be derived from scant records of Viscayno's voyage in 1602, he selected the two best and most salient points of the California coast, San Diego and Monterey, and ordered the founding of a mission at each. He also ordered the selection of a point midway between these two, for another mission to be called Buena Ventura. His activity, generosity, and enthusiasm were inexhaustible. He seems to have had humor as well; for when discussing the names of the missions to be founded, Father Junipero said to him, "But is there to be no mission for our Father St. Francis?" he replied, "If St. Francis wants a mission, let him show us his post, and we will put one there for him!"
The records of this first expedition into California are full of interest. It was divided into two parts, one to go by sea, and one by land; the sea party in two ships, and the land party in two divisions. Every possible precaution and provision was thought of by the wise Galvez; but neither precaution nor provision could make the journey other than a terrible one. Father Junipero, with his characteristic ardor, insisted on accompanying one of the land parties, although he was suffering severely from an inflamed leg, the result of an injury he had received twenty years before in journeying on foot from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. Galvez tried in vain to detain him; he said he would rather die on the road than not go, but that he should not die, for the Lord would carry him through. However, on the second day out, his pain became so great that he could neither sit, stand, nor sleep. Portalá, the military commander of the party, implored him to be carried in a litter; but this he could not brook. Calling one of the muleteers to him, he said,—
"Son, do you not know some remedy for this sore on my leg?"
"Father," replied the muleteer, "what remedy can I know? I have only cured beasts."
"Then consider me a beast," answered Serra; "consider this sore on my leg a sore back, and give me the same treatment you would apply to a beast."
Thus adjured, the muleteer took courage, and saying, "I will do it, Father, to please you," he proceeded to mix herbs in hot tallow, with which he anointed the wound, and so reduced the inflammation that Father Junipero slept all night, rose early, said matins and mass, and resumed his journey in comparative comfort. He bore this painful wound to the end of his life; and it was characteristic of the man as well as of the abnormal standards of the age, that he not only sought no measures for a radical cure of the diseased member, but, obstinately accepting the suffering as a cross, allowed the trouble to be aggravated in every way, by going without shoes or stockings and by taking long journeys on foot.
A diary kept by Father Crespí on his toilsome march from Velicatá to San Diego is full of quaint and curious entries, monotonous in its religious reiterations, but touching in its simplicity and unconscious testimony to his own single-heartedness and patience. The nearest approach to a complaint he makes is to say that "nothing abounds except stones and thorns." When they journey for days with no water except scanty rations from the precious casks they are carrying, he always piously trusts water will be found on the morrow; and when they come to great tracts of impenetrable cactus thickets, through which they are obliged to hew a pathway with axes, as through a forest, and are drenched to the skin in cold rains, and deserted by the Christian Indians whom they had brought from Lower California as guides, he mentions the facts without a murmur, and has even for the deserters only a benediction: "May God guard the misguided ones!" A far more serious grievance to him is that toward the end of the journey he could no longer celebrate full mass because the wafers had given out. Sometimes the party found themselves hemmed in by mountains, and were forced to halt for days while scouts went ahead to find a pass. More than once, hoping that at last they had found a direct and easy route, they struck down to the sea-shore, only to discover themselves soon confronted by impassable spurs of the Coast Range, and forced to toil back again up into the labyrinths of mesas and cactus plains. It was Holy Thursday, the 24th of March, when they set out, and it was not until the 13th of May that they reached the high ground from which they had their first view of the bay of San Diego, and saw the masts of the ships lying at anchor there,—"which sight was a great joy and
