Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches by David Starr Jordan
page 54 of 168 (32%)
and field utensils, and seeds of every useful plant that grew in Spain
and Mexico--the olive and the pomegranate, the grape and the orange,
not forgetting the garlic and the pepper. All these were placed in two
small ships, the San Carlos, under the gallant Captain Vila, and the
San Antonio, under Captain Perez.

Padre Junípero Serra, chief apostle of these Spanish missions, blessed
the vessels and the flags, commending the whole enterprise to the Most
Holy Patriarch San José, who was supposed to feel a special interest in
this class of expeditions. His early flight into Egypt gave him a
peculiar fondness for schemes involving foreign travel. Galvez
exhorted the soldiers and sailors to respect the priests, and not to
quarrel with each other. And thus they sailed away for San Diego in
the winter of 1769.

At the same time there was organized a land expedition, which should
cross the sandy deserts and cactus-covered hills and join the vessels
at San Diego. That there should be no risk of failure, Don Gaspar de
Portolá divided the land forces into two divisions, one led by himself,
the other by Captain Rivera. These two parties were to take different
routes, so that if one were destroyed the other might accomplish the
work. In front of each band were driven a hundred head of cattle,
which were to colonize the new territories with their kind.

Padre Serra went with the land expedition under the command of Portolá.
A barefooted friar, clad in a rough cloak confined by a rope at the
waist, looks comfortable enough in the cool shade of an Italian
cathedral; but the garb of the Franciscan order is ill-fitted to the
peculiarities of the California mesa. For the vegetation of Lower
California makes up in bristliness what it lacks in luxuriance. Bush
DigitalOcean Referral Badge