Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/168

 were finally abandoned, having wrought nothing but evil to those for whose benefit they were primarily established.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Apaches, the districts to the north-west of Mexico were for many years left unvisited by any Europeans, with the exception of a few venturesome miners, who, working at the risk of their lives in the north of the present province of Arizona, won for it its name, originally Arizuma, or the silver-bearing country. To atone for this pause in inland exploration, however, the coasts of both Upper and Lower California became thoroughly well known to Spanish pearl-fishers, who were followed, as the French coureurs de bois had been in the North, by Roman Catholic missionaries, eager to be the first Christian teachers to win the ears of the natives. In the course of about half a century, many missions had been established in Lower California; and though, owing to the law forbidding priests to marry, no permanent root was taken in the country by them, and no homes gathered about their chapels, they paved the way for the advent of the settler, and exercised a refining influence, alike on the wild Spanish fishermen and the fierce and degraded Californian Indians.

The beginning of the 18th century witnessed the first chapter of the thrilling drama of the fall of the Jesuits from the lofty position they had held throughout the world for two centuries. Expelled from Portugal in 1759, and from France in 1764, they flocked to Spain, hoping to find a refuge in the first home of their order. They were disappointed. In 1767, the edict for their banishment, alike from the mother country and her colonies, was issued by Charles III. of Spain, and the Jesuits both at home and abroad found themselves involved in one common ruin.

Rallying as best they could from the blow which deprived them of all their property, and exiled them from the land of their adoption, those members of the disgraced order who had settled in Lower California resolved to begin a new crusade in the north of the same country.

Under the leadership of Father Junipero Serra, appointed president of all the missions to be established in Upper California, the Fathers went forth to set up the cross among the Ahwashtes, Altahmos, Romanans, Klamaths, Modoes, Shastas, Eurocs, and others of the almost countless tribes forming the two great families of the Central and Northern Californians.

Dividing into two parties, the first expedition started for Northern California by land in 1768. The first division, under Captain Rivera of Moncado, after a terrible journey across country, arrived at the site of the present San Diego