knew," had done his work! Junipero Serra was ready for his throne in
Heaven, his crown awaited him, his rough Franciscan habit was to be
glorified. We have briefly glanced at his chief characteristics from his
boyhood in historic Spain, and must have gauged the measure of his
untiring and tried virtue from the time he landed in Mexico and San
Diego, on through the years he labored as the Apostle of California; to
these let us add just a few of the private practices of mortification
which he imposed on his innocent flesh, notwithstanding his age, his
physical infirmities, extraordinary labors and hardships in a new, half
explored country. Virtually they sound like a passage from the lives of
the Saints. His journeys were always on foot, although the old sore on
his leg remained like an instrument of torture throughout his life,
nothing being able to help him. El Camino Real, from San Francisco to
Monterey and from Monterey to San Diego, with its rough roads, was as
familiar to him who walked it with so much difficulty as it is to us who
enjoy it by comfortable travel on the railroad or pleasurable motor
trips; his fasts were austere and frequent, wine he never used, the
discipline was no stranger to him, a bed was not among his possessions,
on the bare floor or bench at most he would rest his sore missionary
body; yet he never imposed unnecessary penance on anyone, he was hard
only on himself, he was gentle and affectionate to a marked degree, his
faith, trust in Providence, humility and charity, were heroic. Of his
seventy-four years of life, fifty-four he had been a Franciscan Priest
and thirty-five he had devoted to missionary work, of which nine were
spent in Mexico and fourteen in California. His wonderful eloquence and
magnetic power for preaching which had won him honors in the Old World
even as a newly ordained priest, he had used and adapted for the
instruction of thousands of heathens of the New World; and now that
christianity and civilization were beginning to bud with springtime
loveliness like the Castilian roses he had planted in some of the