the Pineugnas Indians-men of great height and fine physique, who are described as gentle and courteous for all their prowess and their seven feet of altitude. In the times of the padres large numbers of them, skilled in ship building and living mainly by fishing, dwelt happily in Catalina. The single hotel rests over an ancient Indian buryingground, and the place is rich in historic remains, mortars, pestles, shells strung for use as money-relics of the gentle race whose home was this island. Avalon, the tiny village, nestles in a vale beautiful as that famed in Arthurian ballad. It lies close to the curved beach of one of the little coves which break the abrupt and rocky shores, and has a picturesque har bor. It is the only settled point on the isle, and, besides the hotel, has only a few stores and a number of cottages which are rented at low rates. Behind the hotel rise hills clothed with a peculiarly fine velvety grass, and here are golf links picturesquely placed. Buried far below the modern teeing-grounds lie the relics left by the race so entirely passed away. Hills rise abruptly beyond, and up the side cañons flowers bloom in bewildering variety, while humming-birds hover above them looking like animated reproductions of the Mariposa lilies, those fascinating butterflies of the floral kingdom, whose acquaintance one may make here on the Catalina hillside with a freedom seldom enjoyed on the mainland. Further up the tiny cañons are maidenhair ferns, while quail, abounding everywhere, run fearlessly down almost to the doors of the cottages. The hills rise in an amphitheater about Avalon, and so abrupt are they, and so clear the water of the ocean, that from a great height one may look deeply into the clear waters and see large fish swimming.

If the claim is true that California boasts, roughly speaking, of six climates, Santa Catalina is within the range of the best of them. The temperature never rises above 85° or falls far below 65°. There are no enveloping fog, no scorching winds, and no dust. The air is actually drier than on the mainland. The island, twenty-three miles long by seven wide, sometimes narrowing to one mile, lies bathed in sunshine, clothed with flowers and rare shrubs, a bit of the eternal beauty

of nature lying here protected by the sea from the ravages of man. If tired of the balmy sunshine, the inviting heights urge the climber toward the open ocean on the west side of the island, but it will be long before he reaches, scaling hill beyond hill, the bluffs above the Pacific and sees the ocean dashing at the foot of cliffs which rise abruptly from their bases two thousand feet toward the sky. Here are the homes of great eagles, measuring, some of them, twelve feet from wing to wing, and of wild goats, the descendants of those left on the islands by Vancouver, now numbered by thousands. These are hunted on horseback. Their normal life is ideal, for they have water in plenty, large freedom of range, and abundant food amid the fresh, dewy grasses of the hills. The wild sheep and goats on the neighboring island of San Clemente fare less bravely, for food is scantier, and they have no water save the moisture of the dew.

A stage drive around the island opens views of mountain and of sea of rare scenic value and beauty, the grim nature of the rocky vistas on the ocean side contrasting sharply with the sheltered beaches and balmy air of the channel; but it is on the latter that the true luxury of existence is realized. Hours may be spent drifting in glass-bottomed boats over the vast saltwater aquariums, whose submarine gardens, seen clearly at a depth of from fifty to seventy feet, gleam with the green, purple, and yellow of kelp anemone and seaweed, with glittering shells and filmy jellyfish shining through.

The great amusement is fishing, and the size and variety of the fish are wonderful. The famous barracuda, immortalized by Kipling in his "Deep Sea Chantey," the yellowtail, whitefish, mackerel, and a brilliant red fish, far larger and more beautiful than the goldfish, are all good eating, and flying-fish skim the waters everywhere. There are no fish stories told here, for reality beggars the imagination of the most experienced fisherman, and great twenty and thirty pound monsters are daily landed by anglers, with respectful admiration, and a rare and beautiful absence of boastfulness. Pelican and seal are the chief enemies of the fish. A circle of seal will sometimes make a drive inshore and devour hundreds at a meal, and the great fish will

be seen leaping from the bay seeking

escape.

The seal rocks at the southern extremity of the island are best seen from a row boat; a close approach is possible, and the monsters may be viewed in all their ugliness on the rocks, or in the suddenly acquired grace which is theirs when their

short fins, inadequate to the rock-climbing to which their inner aspirations constantly incline them, carry the great bulks with wonderful celerity through the dangers of surf and rock to the open water, where they swim gracefully about.

At the northern end of Catalina the mountains break abruptly into a narrow

isthmus, a half-mile wide; and here are ruins of government barracks built during the Civil War, facing on one side the quiet sound, on the oth r the roaring breakers of the ocean.

Father Palou, in his memoirs, describes the thousands of Indians who lived in this and the neighboring islands when the Franciscans began their work of Christianization, and the insistent modern life of the country gives place in thought to the past, as one considers these tall, gentle savages now so entirely vanished from their ancient homes. On the mainland this delicate mingling of old with new in the life of California appeals most of all to that traveler who, leaving the beaten tourist track, lingers long among the ruins of mission and presidio, giving to their history such appreciative study and love as call forth from the brown old piles the treasures of sentiment and devotion which they conceal. What is to the casual tourist but a pile of tumbling wall and irregular arch, gradually sinking into barren plain or ocean sand, becomes to the enthusiast instinct with life and spiritual force, rising grandly until the vivid blue arc of the western sky can scarce subtend all that the ruins have to tell of sublime courage and wise devotion. These cloistered arches, which measure perhaps no two alike, were made of mud by brown Indians, but the adobe brick and the graceful outline of the ruins have a spiritual history.

Serra, Curci, Palou, and their like who beat the sword of the Spaniard into the plowshare of the training-school. It was these wise priests of the missions of Alta California who used the life-giving waters of the land, not alone to mark the Indian in baptism as the child of God, but to bless him in his obedience to nat

ural as to divine law, to make his desert blossom, to provide vast systems of irrigation, to fill his hills with cattle, his vineyards with grapes, and his fields with bread. To take the native, uncivilized, but gentle California Indian and train him in the arts of domestic life, to teach him agriculture and cattleraising, masonry, blacksmithing, weaving, and a thousand useful trades, was no less an achievement than to elevate his family life, develop his mental power, and bring his spiritual nature into the environment of the Gospel of Christ. Truly wonderful results were attained from small beginnings. Two priests, with a few protecting soldiers, some cattle, seeds, and tools, went to a new location; a cross was set up, a booth was built of branches, bells were hung on a neighboring tree, a grand campanile of the forest, and the whole was consecrated. When mass had been said, the neighboring Indians were gathered, and a few presents made. A few years, and, lo! the mission, with arch and cloister, and clustered homes and schools, and ordered services, and choirs of Indian youth! The converts engaged in useful trades, herding thousands of cattle, gathering mighty harvests, famous as the producers of the best wine and flour and oil of the world, architects, artisans, agriculturists, and Christians.

The story of the missions has done much to wipe out in the New World the reproach of a Spanish evangelization which often carried the sword in one hand, the baptismal chrism in the other. It was

The California missions owed much to the Saint of Assisi, that most unselfish founder of an order the self-renunciation of whose members startled even the devotees of those ages of consecration. One of the most devoted missionaries of the Franciscan Order was Padre Junipero Serra, the superintendent and founder of the Indian Missions. Born in the island of Majorca, Serra sang as a boy in the Convent of San Bernardino, but entered the Franciscan Order at sixteen, taking his final vow in 1730, at the age of eightHis passionate desire for a missionary life was shared by three of his fellowstudents, Palou, Verger, and Crespi. These four young monks, receiving in 1749 permission to join a body of missionary explorers who were to sail from Cadiz, set forth with great rejoicing for Mexico, under the inspiring motto, Unus non sufficit orbis. It was only after nineteen years of missionary service and training in Mexico that circumstances, and his superior officers of the College of San Fernando, allowed Serra, the man of quenchless purpose, to fulfill his lifelong desire

een.

In

of laboring among the Indians on the western shores of the New World. 1767, by the suppression of the Jesuits, their missions in Lower California passed into the hands of the Dominicans and Franciscans. Serra was at once appointed superintendent of the missions of all California. It was no part of his purpose to linger among missions already established. An old portrait of Serra existing in the College of San Fernando, in the City of Mexico, shows a delicately sensitive face of great spirituality and tenderness, filled with yearning sadness and pathos, yet strong and radiant with indomitable courage and fiery faith. He was fifty-six years old when he set out with his band of sixteen followers, among whom were his friends Crespi and Palou, on his new quest for souls. So rejoiced was he at this new prospect of sacrifice and of service that he was "unable to speak a single word for tears." There were two land and two sea parties in the expedition, and Serra's division, after two months of journeying over cactus plain and rocky mountain, rejoined the others