Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/400

380 Garzes, on his mission in Upper California, carried a canvas banner, with the Virgin Mary attractively drawn on one side, and the Devil stirring the flames of hell on the other. This he unfurled when he reached an Indian village. The natives of course exclaimed, of one side, “It is good;” of the other, “It is bad.” The more glaring a painting the better was it suited for use in a mission chapel. Perouse said the picture of hell in the church of San Carlos had done a mighty work of conversion, where Protestantism, without images or ceremonies, would have been powerless. The other side of the same banner-picture, which presented the charms of Paradise, was wholly ineffective. The Indians pronounced it “tame.” Langsdorff tells us of the wonders wrought “by a figure of the Virgin Mary represented as springing from the coronal of leaves of the great American aloe, instead of the ordinary stem.”

The Roman Church has been in a measure compelled — and shall we not say justified? — in its abundant and various use of the scenic, dramatic, symbolic, and ritual element in addressing such masses of the ignorant, rude, and simple in deserts and wildernesses. These are the same scenic and ritualistic elements which, lifted by refining tastes and elegant appliances, with vestments, music, and processionals, have the highest æsthetic effect for the most cultivated.

Father Palon's first baptism on one of his missions in California must have exhibited an interesting family group. An Indian presented himself with a mother and three daughters, to all four of whom he was the husband, and each of the daughters offered a son by him for baptism. The infants were nearly of the same age. The dependence upon their ritual altar furnishing must, however, at times have embarrassed the good Fathers. We read that after De Soto's disastrous battle at Mobile, in October, 1540, in which all his sacramental furniture was burned, the priests