cactuses, so prickly that it makes one's eyes smart to look at them,
and bunch cactuses, in wads of thorns as large as a bushel-basket,
swarm everywhere. Before the barefooted Padre had traveled far, so
Miss Graham tells us in her charming little paper on the Spanish
missions, he had made the acquaintance of many species of cactus.
Horses in that country become lame sometimes, and people say that they
are "cactus-legged." And soon Father Serra became "cactus-legged,"
too, so that he could neither walk nor ride a mule. The Indians were
therefore obliged to carry him in a litter, for he would not go back to
La Paz.

But the Father felt great compassion for the Indians, who had enough to
do to carry themselves. He prayed fervently for a time, and then,
according to the chronicler of the expedition, "He called a mule-driver
and said to him: 'Son, do you know some remedy for my foot and leg?'
But the mule-driver answered, 'Father, what remedy can I know? Am I a
surgeon? I am a mule-driver, and have cured only the sore backs of
beasts.' 'Then consider me a beast,' said the Father, 'and this sore
leg to be a sore back, and treat me as you would a mule.' Then said
the muleteer, 'I will, Father, to please you,' and taking a small piece
of tallow, he mashed it between two stones, mixing with it herbs that
grew close by. Then heating it over the fire, he anointed the foot and
leg, and left the plaster upon the sore. 'God wrought in such a
manner,' wrote the Padre Serra afterwards, 'that I slept all that
night, and awoke so much relieved that I got up and said matins and
prime, and afterwards mass, as if nothing had happened.'"

But Father Serra did not show his faith by such simple miracles as
these alone. In one of his revival meetings in Mexico, Bancroft tells
us, he was beating himself with a chain in punishment for his imaginary