at must never be cured, fasting much and passing sleepless
nights, depriving himself of comfortable clothing and nutritious food,
he felt that he was imitating the saints and martyrs who were the
ideals of his sickly boyhood, and in recompense of abstinence he was
happy. He was kind-hearted and charitable to all, but most strict in
his enforcement of religious duties. It never occurred to him to doubt
his absolute right to flog his neophytes for any slight negligence in
matters of the faith. His holy desires trembled within him like
earthquake throbs. In his eyes there was but one object worth living
for--the performance of religious duty; and but one way to accomplish
that object--a strict and literal compliance with Franciscan rules. He
could never understand that there was anything beyond the narrow field
of his vision. He could apply religious enthusiasm to practical
affairs. Because he was a grand missionary, he was none the less a
money-maker and civilizer; but money-making and civilizing were
adjuncts only to mission work, and all not for his glory, but for the
glory of God."

After Junipero Serra came a saner and wiser, if not a better, man, the
Padre Fermin Lasuen. I need not go into details in regard to him or
his life. No miracles followed his path, and no saint made him the
object of spectacular intervention; but his gentle earnestness counted
for more in the development of Old California than that of any other
man. Of Lasuen, Bancroft says:

"In him were united the qualities that make up the ideal Padre, without
taint of hypocrisy or cant. He was a frank, kind-hearted old man, who
made friends of all he met. Of his fervent piety there are abundant
proofs, and his piety and humility were of an agreeable type,
unobtrusive, and blended with common sense. He overcame obstacles in
the way of duty, but he created no obstacles for the mere sake of
surmounting them. He was not a man to limp through life on a sore leg
if a cure could be found. . . . First among the Californian prelates
let us ever rank Fermin de Lasuen, as a friar who rose above his
environment and lived many years in advance of his times."

Thirteen years after the serene founding of the Mission San Francisco
came the first shock to the community, thus noticed in a letter from
the governor of the territory to the _comandante_ at San Francisco:

"Whenever there may arrive at the Port of San Francisco a ship named
the Colum