ourselves an independent nation, a Spanish ship, in the name of Saint
Francis, was unloading the centuries of her own civilization at the
Golden Gate. San Diego had come earlier. Then, slowly, as mission after
mission was built along the soft coast wilderness, new ports were
established--at Santa Barbara, and by Point San Luis for San Luis Obispo,
which lay inland a little way up the gorge where it opened among the
hills. Thus the world reached these missions by water; while on land,
through the mountains, a road led to them, and also to many more that
were too distant behind the hills for ships to serve--a rough road, long
and lonely, punctuated with church towers and gardens. For the Fathers
gradually so stationed their settlements that the traveler might each
morning ride out from one mission and by evening of a day's fair journey
ride into the next. A lonely, rough, dangerous road, but lovely, too,
with a name like music--El Camino Real. Like music also were the names of
the missions--San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Rey de Francia, San Miguel,
Santa Ynes--their very list is a song.

So there, by-and-by, was our continent, with the locomotive whistling
from Savannah to Boston along its eastern edge, and on the western the
scattered chimes of Spain ringing among the unpeopIed mountains. Thus
grew the two sorts of civilization--not equally. We know what has
happened since. To-day the locomotive is whistling also from The Golden
Gate to San Diego; but still the old mission-road goes through the
mountains, and along it the footsteps of vanished Spain are marked with
roses, and broken cloisters, and the crucifix.

But this was 1855. Only the barkentine brought to Padre Ignacio the signs
from the world that he once had known and loved so dearly. As for the new
world making a rude noise to the northward, he trusted that it might keep
away from Santa Ysabel, and he waited for the vessel that was overdue