at San Diego, where, on July 16, 1769, by the erection of a rude booth of branches and the singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus, the corner-stone of the civilization of California was laid. Even before this Crespi had set out on his venturous but unsuccessful quest for the Bay of Monterey. Guided only by the old charts of Viscayno, the party passed its goal, and wandered forty leagues to the north, where they claimed San Francisco Bay for their founder and patron saint. If, according to the latest contention, this beautiful sheet of water had been piously preempted by Sir Francis Drake, who gave its shores their first religious service in a form of sound words taken from the English Prayer-Book, St. Francis has no prior claim on the beauties of the Golden Gate. Yet his followers believed that he had pointed out San Francisco as the site of a future mission to his glory by miraculous interposition, leading them past Monterey, which they were seeking, into the northern port, of whose existence they did not know. Crespi's party returned exhausted to San Diego after a terrible six months' wandering, and found Serra re

straining, by his indomitable faith and courage, Galvez, the Spanish commander, from returning to Mexico. The arrival of the ship San Antonio provided food, and expeditions by sea and land speedily discovered the point of pines of the beautiful harbor of Monterey.

Founding the mission of San Carlos (now known as El Carmelo), Junipero Serra made it his headquarters, leaving it only when the founding of a new mission or his duties as general superintendent required. The rest of his time was spent on the shores of the beautiful Carmelo Bay working with his Indians in their labors in field or in shop.

Crespi's memoirs give a vivid picture of the zeal and enjoyment of Serra in his work, the abandonment of his self-sacrifice, the vigor of his preaching, when, with the cross in one hand and a sharp stone in the other, he would beat and tear his breast to indicate to the Indians his horror of sin and his desire to tear it from him. Nothing could exceed his delight at the founding of a new mission save his joy in baptizing converts, of whom he was privileged to receive more than a thousand.

Seeking ground for a new mission, that of San Antonio, Serra wandered into the unexplored wilderness south of Monterey, and, after sixty miles of travel, came upon an oak-shaded plain, with a river full and swift running through it. Hanging the bells which he carried upon a tree, he rang and rang them, joyously shouting, "Hear, hear! O ye Gentiles, come, come to the faith of Jesus Christ!" To the small band accompanying him, who remonstrated that there were none to hear, he replied: "Let me unburden my heart, which could wish that this bell should be heard by all the world, or at least by all the Gentiles in these mountains." And he rang on until an Indian appeared-the first instance in which a native had been

present at the foundation of a mission. San Antonio became very rich; there were several large farms; with a chapel on each, and a wonderful mill run by water brought for many miles through a stone-walled ditch and driven by a flume and a large waterwheel, all built and placed by an Indian named Nolbesto, who did the work with his own hands, taking his idea from the balance-wheel of a watch. But it was long before the mission attained its perfection of stone-arched church, surrounded by its Indian homes, its trade shops, its waving fields of grain, its houses and its schools. Not until after the death of Serra did the missions grow rich. Then the severe toil of the padres was mitigated. On his outline map of California stretches

the long line of seacoast, with the nine missions founded during his lifetime indicated and connected by roads leading from one to the other. All the rest of the great fertile country from San Diego to Monterey was a blank, save for teeming Indian villages, which he constantly visited, preaching to the people and weeping in grief that he could do them no more good. Twenty-one of these villages existed on the Santa Barbara coast alone.

Serra traveled much on foot, passing over the five hundred miles of country from San Diego to San Francisco, and even walking, although he was afflicted with a great lameness, from Guadalajara to the City of Mexico, where he pleaded the cause of his Indians so well that, returning from his memorable journey, he founded San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Buena Ventura, and San Juan Capistrano, whose superb ruins are the delight of the traveler of to-day. At El Carmelo he died in 1784, strong in courage and firm of will to the last; and soldiers who watched about his coffin could not hold back the throngs of Indians who pressed to touch the garments of him whom they had loved so much on earth. He is buried beneath the chancel of the great stone church which was later built over him, and which is now restored and kept

THE CABIN ADOBE

in good repair. It is certainly, for situation, the most beautiful of all the mission churches, and its associations, as the center of the work for the Christianization of thousands of California Indians, are sacred. The stone is tinted a fine yellow, and a Moorish tower and dome rise symmetrically. From the belfry, with its worn steps, may be seen the blue waves of Carmel Bay, and, beyond, the vast rocky cliffs of

Point Leobos, pushing down into the Pacific.

Here, too, the great functions of the Spanish Court at Monterey were held at a later day. New governors were received here, and horsemen came across the hills from the presidio, with pomp and circumstance and fair Spanish dames, to receive the blessing of the Church, while priests with troops of acolytes and singing Indian boys went forth from the mission robed in splendor scarcely less than theirs to meet them. For in Monterey, the capital of Alta California, all that was rich, beautiful, and splendid in the life of the country centered, and all did homage to the mission fathers three miles across the hills. Once a year a service is held at El Carmelo Church; it is at night, and the people come from all the country about, and from the Church of San Carlos at Monterey. One cannot easily forget the scene, with its priests and its piety, its people joined in one common purpose; but when all are gone, climb to the gallery under the beautiful star-faced window of the façade, and, looking down, let imagi nation fill the church with mission Indians kneeling on the bare earth floor as they listen to Serra's last sermon, when the friar beat his heart with the great stone in the fervor with which he pleaded

with them; the heart which strained to breaking in his zeal for their salvation, and gave at the last its final tribute of sacrifice in death. And here at the altar he knelt for the last time a few hours before his release, while Father Palou, his lifelong friend. administered the Holy Viaticum, the Indians singing the "Tantum Ergo Sacramentum," the death-song of the Church, in which Father Junipero's voice joined high and strong as ever." As the walker nears Monterey he will not pass without awe the Cabin Adobe where one of the old mission Indians lived and lived and lived until his years, far beyond the hundred mark, so accumulated that the oldest inhabitant of the whites dared hardly to name them or to credit the story of his baptism by the old Mission fathers. And as one, after long lingering, passes

out of the town of Old Monterey, he will surely pause at the last by the simple cross, bare in the moonlight, which marks the spot where Junipero Serra claimed for his Master in baptism his first Indian convert of the mission.

To pass the night in an old adobe, still presided over by a Spanish lady of Castilian blood, who was young in the days of Colonel Fremont, and who joined the Pathfinder in planting the historic rosebush which, the wonder of travelers, now grows a giant across her dooryard, is an experience which is not granted to all visitors. The lady of the Bonifacios speaks no word of English, and her highbred Spanish enhanced the charm of her beauty as we favored travelers sat at a breakfast under the trees of the adobe walled garden, while the strawberries, with their accompaniments of fresh bread and butter, prepared the way for a return to modern life.

The whalers which at one time made good trade for Monterey have scattered to more favored ports, but sometimes they revisit the old wharfs, or anchor picturesquely in the harbor. Often, too, the

whales enter the bay, and may be seen playing in the bluest of blue waters, while the surf beats over the rocky points, and away in the distance, beyond the shore of Santa Cruz, the mountains Gabilan and Coma Prieta and Hamilton rise, with their serried ridges softened in winter by the snow against the brilliant sky.

It was the scenery of the coast about Monterey that Robert Louis Stevenson so loved; and the delicious combination of ocean and of shore now known as the Seventeen-Mile Drive was set apart at his instance. Here one passes from amidst deep pine forests to a shore girt with rocks and snowy with surf, where great sea-lions ride on the waves along shell beaches habited by sea-birds of. varied size, across long stretches of level shingle, where the rollers strike surely and evenly, to rocky points beyond, where the sea is torn to shreds on jagged boulders, or sucked deep in emerald falls into booming caves beneath the rocks. the Monterey cypress receives the traveler in its weird and dim groves, on the very edges of the rocky points reaching down into the ocean.

There