Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Father Salvatierra, head of
the Jesuit missions in Lower California, fixed his eye on this region,
and made plans for its occupation. In this the good Father Kühn--a
German from Bavaria, whom the Spaniards knew as "Quino,"--seconded him.
But these plans came to naught. The power of the Jesuit order was
broken; the charge of the missions in Lower California was given to the
Dominicans, that of Upper California to the Franciscans, and to these
and their associates the colonization of California is due. The
Franciscans, it is said, "were the first white men who came to live and
die in Alta California."

And this is how it came about. One hundred and thirty years ago, the
port of La Paz, in Baja California, lay baking in the sun. La Paz was
then, as now, a little old town, with narrow, stony streets and adobe
houses, standing amidst palms, and chaparral, and cactus. To this port
of La Paz came, one eventful day, Don José de Galvez, envoy of the King
of Spain. He brought orders to the Governor of California, Don Gaspar
de Portolá, that he should send a vessel in search of the ports of San
Diego and of Monterey, on the supposed island, or peninsula, of Upper
California, once found by Vizcaino, but lost for a century and a half.
There they were to establish colonies and missions of the Holy Catholic
Church. They were "to spread the Catholic religion," said the letter,
"among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of
paganism, thereby to extend the dominion of the king, our lord, and to
protect this peninsula of California from the ambitious designs of the
foreign nations."

"The land must be fertile for everything," says Galvez, "for it lies in
the same latitude as Spain." So they carried all sorts of household