offenses, when a man seized the chain and beat himself to death as a
miserable sinner, in the presence of the people. At another time,
sixty persons who neglected to attend his meetings were killed by an
epidemic, and the disease went on, killing one after another, until the
people had been scared into attention to their religious duties. Then,
at a sign from Padre Serra, the plague abated.

At one time the good Padre was well lodged and entertained in a very
neat wayside cottage on a desolate and solitary road. Later he learned
that there was no such cottage in that region, and, we are told, he
concluded that his entertainers were Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.

Suffering greatly from thirst on one of his journeys, he said to his
companions, who were complaining: "The best way to prevent thirst is to
eat little and talk less." In a violent storm he was perfectly calm,
and the storm ceased instantly when a saint chosen by lot had been
addressed in prayer. And so on; for miracles like these are constant
accompaniments of a mind wholly given over to religious enthusiasm.

In due season, Padre Serra and his party arrived at San Diego, having
followed the barren and dreary coast of Lower California for three
hundred and sixty miles, often carrying water for great distances, and
as often impeded by winter rains. The boats and the other party were
already there, and in the valley to the north of the _mesa_, on the
banks of the little San Diego River, they founded the first mission in
California.

Within a fortnight of Serra's arrival at San Diego, a special land
expedition set out in search of Vizcaino's lost port of Monterey. The
expedition, under Don Gaspar de Portolá, was unhappy in some respects,