barkentine came sailing with news and tokens from Spain. It was in
1685 that a galleon had begun such voyages up to the lower country from
Acapulco, where she loaded the cargo that had come across Tehuantepec on
mules from Vera Cruz. By 1768 she had added the new mission of San Diego
to her ports. In the year that we, a thin strip of colonists away over
on the Atlantic edge of the continent, declared ourselves an independent
nation, that Spanish ship, in the name of Saint Francis, was unloading
the centuries of her own civilization at the Golden Gate. Then, slowly,
as mission after mission was planted along the soft coast wilderness,
she made new stops--at Santa Barbara, for instance; and by Point San
Luis for San Luis Obispo, that lay inland a little way up the gorge
where it opened among the hills. Thus the world reached these places
by water; while on land, through the mountains, a road came to lead to
them, and also to many more that were too distant behind the hills
for ships to serve--a long, lonely, rough road, punctuated with church
towers and gardens. For the fathers gradually so stationed their
settlements that the traveller might each morning ride out from one
mission and by evening of a day's fair journey ride into the next. A
long, rough road; and in its way pretty to think of now.

So there, by-and-by, was our continent, with the locomotive whistling
from Savannah to Boston along its eastern edge, and on the other the
scattered chimes of Spain ringing among the unpeopled mountains. Thus
grew the two sorts of civilization--not equally. We know what has
happened since. To-day the locomotive is whistling also from the Golden
Gate to San Diego; but the old mission road goes through the mountains
still, and on it the steps of vanished Spain are marked with roses, and
white cloisters, and the crucifix.

But this was 1855. Only the barkentine brought the world that he loved
to the padre. As for the new world which was making a rude noise to the
northward, he trusted that it might keep away from Santa Ysabel, and he
waited for the vessel that was overdue with its package containing his
single worldly indulgence.

As the little, ancient bronze bell continued its swinging in the tower,
its plaintive call reached something in the padre's memory. Without
knowing, he began to sing. He took up the slow strain not quite
correctly, and dropped it, and took it up again, always in cadence with
the bell:

[Musical Score