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Ella M. Sexton - Stories of California
but they did not discover San Francisco Bay. On leaving New Albion, Drake sailed the Golden
Hind across the Pacific to the East Indies and the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope
home to England, with all the treasure he had taken. The queen received him with great honors and his
ship was kept a hundred years in memory of the brave admiral, who had commanded it on this voyage.
During the next century several English commanders of vessels sailed the South Sea while hunting
Spanish galleons to capture, and these ships often touched at Lower California for fresh water. Some of
the captains explored the coast and traded with the Indians, but no settlements were made.
Then the Spanish tried to find and settle the country they had heard so many reports of, thinking to
provide stations where their trading ships might anchor for supplies and protection. Viscaino, on his
second voyage for this purpose, landed at San Diego in 1602. Sailing on to the island he named Santa
Catalina, Viscaino found there a tribe of fine-looking Indians who had large houses and canoes. They
were good hunters and fishermen and clothed themselves in sealskins. Viscaino went on to Monterey and
finally as far north as Oregon, but owing to severe storms, and to sickness among his sailors, he was
obliged to return to Mexico.
For a long time after this failure to settle upon the coast, the Spanish came to Lower California for the
pearl-fisheries. Along the Gulf of California were many oyster-beds where the Indians secured the shells
by diving for them. Large and valuable pearls were found in many of the oysters, and the Spanish
collected them in great quantities from the Indians who did not know their real value.
In this peninsula of Lower California fifteen Missions, or settlements, each having a church, were
founded by Padres of the Jesuits. But later the Jesuits were ordered out of the country, and their Missions
turned over to the Franciscan order of Mexico.
With the coming of the Franciscans a new period of California's history began. Spain wished to settle
Alta California, or that region north of the peninsula, and Father Serra, the head and leader of these
Franciscans, was chosen to begin this work.
How he did this, and how he and his followers founded the California Missions you will read in the story
of that time.
THE STORY OF THE MISSIONS AND OF FATHER SERRA
The old Missions of California are landmarks that remind us of Father Serra and his band of faithful
workers. There were twenty-one of their beautiful churches, and though some are ruined and neglected,
others like the Mission Dolores of San Francisco and the Santa Barbara and Monterey buildings are still
in excellent condition. From San Diego to San Francisco these Missions were located, about thirty miles
apart, and so well were the sites chosen that the finest cities of the state have grown round the old
churches.
Father Junipero Serra was the president and leader of the Franciscan missionaries and the founder of the
Missions. He had been brought up in Spain, and had dreamed from his boyhood of going to the New
World, as the Spanish called America, to tell the savages how to be Christians. He began his work as a
missionary in Mexico and there labored faithfully among the Indians for nearly twenty years. But as his
greatest wish was to preach to those in unknown places he was glad to be chosen to explore Alta or
Upper California.
Marching by land from Loreto, a Mission of Lower California, Father Serra, with Governor Portola and
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