men" who had given themselves up to the grand work of carrying the
Gospel among gentiles and savages. The missionary idea thus implanted
became the dominant purpose of his life, and neither the astonishing
success of his sermons, nor the applause with which his lectures were
received when he was made professor of theology, sufficed to dampen his
apostolic zeal. Whatever work was given him to do, he did with all his
heart, and with all his might, for such was the man's nature; but
everywhere and always he looked forward to the mission field as his
ultimate career. He was destined, however, to wait many years before his
chance came. At length, in 1749, after making many vain petitions to be
set apart for foreign service, he and Palou were offered places in a
body of priests who, at the urgent request of the College of San
Fernando, in Mexico, were then being sent out as recruits to various
parts of the New World. The hour had come; and in a spirit of gratitude
and joy too deep for words, Junipero Serra set his face towards the far
lands which were henceforth to be his home.

The voyage out was long and trying. In the first stage of it - from
Majorca to Malaga - the dangers and difficulties of seafaring were
varied, if not relieved by strange experiences, of which Palou has left
us a quaint and graphic account. Their vessel was a small English
coaster, in command of a stubborn cross-patch of a captain, who combined
navigation with theology, and whose violent protestations and fondness
for doctrinal dispute allowed his Catholic passengers, during the
fifteen days of their passage, scarcely a minute's peace. His habit was
to declaim chosen texts out of his "greasy old" English Bible, putting
his own interpretation upon them; then, if when challenged by Father
Junipero, who "was well trained in dogmatic theology," he could find no
verse to fit his argument, he would roundly declare that the leaf he
wanted happened to be torn. Such methods are hardly praiseworthy. But