the Holy Virgin in its stead; he had traversed deserts and mountains with his army; he had desolated provinces, and marched in triumph through hostile lands; he had removed obstacles that seemed insurmountable, and braved perils and sufferings such as rarely fall to the lot of man; he had miraculously escaped amid the yells and curses and fury of a barbarous population; he had disregarded constituted authority and the claims of a generous hospitality; he had subjugated a mighty empire, and the monarch, Montezuma, was fettered by his command; with very fear the lords of Tezcuco and the princes of Tenochtitlan had trembled in his presence; he had ignominiously executed the youthful emperor Guatemozin, whose noble spirit he could not subdue; he had deluged the Aztec capital with the blood of its inhabitants, and planted the Cross upon the tops of their gloomy teocallis; he had plundered the palaces of the rich, and profaned the sacred temples of the gods; he had filled the regions of Anahuac with the wailings of woe, and fired the great city of the valley, so that the sky was black with the smoke of a terrible conflagration; he had overthrown the altars of a horrid superstition, and upon their ruins he had established the church of the Prince of Peace; he had been looked upon as a god amongst the Indians, and as a great chief by the Spaniards, whose orders they implicitly obeyed; but here he was in the Gulf of California, the mere sport of the elements; at the mercy of a howling tempest which he could not abate, and foaming billows which he could not command. Providence spared his life. By his indomitable energy the leaky and dismantled craft was brought back to Santa Cruz, the point from which he had started in the gulf. No good end was accomplished by this fruitless expedition.

He won no fresh laurels for himself, nor did he make any new contributions to science. Disappointed in this maritime enterprise, he set sail, and landing at Acapulco, he returned to Mexico, where his wife and friends had been for some months apprehensive of his safety. Two vessels in the mean time had been sent in search of him by Don Antonio de Mendoza, the lately appointed viceroy. Nothwithstanding the disasters which befell his little squadron on the Pacific coast, and though now superseded in his authority as Captain-General of New Spain, he lost no time after his return to the scenes of his former achievements in furnishing the necessary means to fit out three more ships, which he intrusted to the command of Ulloa.

This gallant navigator sailed in 1537, and spent two years in exploring the gulf. He found the peninsula wild and barren, and its natives wretched and naked. Subsequent attempts were made by the viceroys of New Spain to settle the inhospitable country, but without marked success, until a half century afterwards.

The Indians were just as little elevated above the brute creation, as the intellectual and refined of modern times flatter themselves to be "only a little lower than the angels." Ignorant and barbarous as they were, they soon felt their inferiority. An unwavering and untiring perseverance gradually paved the way for a respectable state of civilization. The ideas associated with a debasing idolatry gave way to a more enlightened state of society. A garrison was ultimately established at La Paz, in 1596. Missionaries in the mean time were indefatigable in their labors. In less than ten years afterwards, the first Mission was founded, and others speedily followed. Amid arid wastes and barren mountains the doctrine of eternal salvation was preached to the

benighted heathen. The consequence was, that the savages of Lower California, in course of time, were found kneeling catechumens at the altars of Christianity. The followers of the Cross have since held undisputed sway over the sterile hills and sandy plains of the peninsula. Though Cortez failed in establishing garrisons and founding missions along the shores of the gulf, the world is largely indebted to him for the zeal which he manifested in extending the blessings of civilization. He had risked his life; he had spent a princely fortune; he had pledged the costly jewels of his beautiful wife; he had reduced his magnificent establishment and involved himself in bankruptcy, and all, too, for the accomplishment of the darling object of his ambition. His name will go down to the latest posterity as the greatest hero and the most remarkable man of the age in which he lived.

The Missions of Upper California.

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INE years before the Mission Dolores was founded, the Jesuits, those intriguing followers of Ignatius Loyola, had been expelled from Spain and her dominions by Charles III., in 1767, and were suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773. Those times form a remarkable epoch in the history of nations. India was gradually yielding to the superiority of British arms; Russia was at war with Turkey; Poland had been partitioned by Prussia and the unscrupulous Catherine II.; France was heaving with revolutionary principles, and the throne of Louis XVI. was tottering to its base; blood had been spilt at Lexington and Bunker Hill, and the foundations of a mighty empire of freedom had been laid, and cemented by the blood of the gallant Warren and his brave associates, when the Franciscan Fathers were busily engaged in extending the spiritual kingdom of their Heavenly Master in the benighted region of Upper California. Feeling no interest in the wars of Europe and Asia, and utterly ignorant of the current events of the outer world, they left their cloisters and their convents in Lower California and in Mexico, and, inspired with a glowing zeal to bring "from darkness into light" the savage tribes of this country, they unfurled the banner of the Cross, and devoted their lives to "the glory of God and the salvation of souls." When, in the latter part of the eleventh century, the enthusiast, Peter the Hermit, with a Christian army

of 300,000 men under his direction, marched towards the East, for the purpose of driving the Infidels from Jerusalem and the Holy Land, his bravery was not greater, nor were his motives and untiring devotion to the holy cause more honest and sincere, than were those of the God-fearing Friars who founded the Missions, and first promulgated the evangelical truths of the Gospel to the miserable aborigines of Upper California. Encouraged and aided by the princes and potentates of Christendom (some of whom were found among their chieftains), the crusaders marched forth with Volonté de Dieu inscribed upon their red-crossed banners, to conquer by the sword and establish the Bible for the Koran, and plant upon the towers and ramparts of the Holy City the cross instead of the crescent.

The military display of the warriors was as grand and imposing, as the result of the crusades was iniquitous and disastrous. They left their homes with bounding hearts, and waving plumes, and shining helmets, and glittering spears, and costly armor, while their prancing steeds were gayly caparisoned, and the mountains and the valleys rang with the spirit-stirring strains of martial music. The Fathers, on the other hand, clad in the humble gray habiliments of their order, simply buckled on the sword of truth, and carried with them "the glad tidings of salvation" and the blessings of civilization; and devoutly trusting in Divine Providence to crown their efforts with success, they speedily vanquished their great arch-enemy, the Devil. They carried with them the royal standard of Spain, and took possession of the country in the name of their sovereign. Some of them bore banners, upon which were rudely painted pictures. Painted representations appeal to the senses, and in some measure supply