DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 195, 22 December 1876, Page 14

DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY.

The Jesmts were the first to take charge of the work in Lower Calitornia as far back as the year 1683. In the year 1767 they had colonised and Christianised all that peninsula. Bufc in that year the Jung or fcpain carried into execution a secret resolution that on a certain day he would expel all the Jesuits from his dominions. This ace reached the Jesuit missionaries in Lower California. At the concerted day and hour the Governor appeared at the missions in* iiower California and summoned the missionaries into his presence, to surrender the missions, together with their reputed treasures of gold ana silver. His behest was answered by a few gray haired old P vl S \ b . eann S the marks of the toil and poverty which they shared witn their Indian converts, who accompanied them with tears and lamentation to the ships which bore them away into banishment, like convicted criminals. T Th n fi i nal resulfc oi tnis harsh procedure was that the missions of ijower California were surrendered to the Dominicans, while the virgin neld of "Upper California was yielded to the Franciscans. Aflis could not have been done nt a more fortunate juncture. Father Jumpero Serra, at that time President of the Franciscans in California, was a man of ferrent piety, indomitable will, irrepressible energy and unconquerable fortitude, all which qualities were concentrated into one purpose, "ir a la conqmsia J' — to conquer souls to the dominion of the Church. Under his auspices the Mission of San JJiego, the first settlement made by whites in California, was effected on «J nne 16, 1769, and that of Carmel, at Monterey, on June 3, 1770, together with two Presidios at the same points. t o r!^ 6 estaDlis hment there of these two Missions and Presidios ot ban Diego and Monterey, with the consequent support which they gave to the pious labors of the missionaries, did not satisfy those devoted men. Father Junipero Serra, the founder and first President of the Franciscan Missions of Upper California, and the real conqueror of thia region, with that pious zeal for the salvation of souls winch prompted him ever to go on with the conquest (ir a la conquesta), represented to the Marquis de la Croix, the then Ticeroy of Mexico, that it was a reproach to Catholic Christianity, that there was no mission dedicated to San Francisco de Assisi, the founder and patron of the Order which bore his name. There was a tradition among the old native California™ that the Viceroy replied : "If our Father San Francisco wants a Mission dedicated to him, let him show us that good port up beyond Monterey, and he will build him a Mission there." long before this, there was a report coming down from the early navigators that on the north-western coast about a i°if i es norfch of Montere 55 r 1 there existed a large bay, through v- Ch la *ge volumes of fresl water poured into the sea from rivers which flowed from an unknown distance in the interior. But later explorers had not been able to find this entrance, and in the time of the Marquis de la Croix, the Bay of San Francisco had come to be considered quite as apocryphal as the Is'and of Formosa or the Antartic Continent of Commodore Wilkes in our day. It was therefore with a feeling of prayerful humorousness that the Viceroy invoked the aid of Saint Francisco iv the discovery of this concealed harbor. Father Junipero, however, took the Viceroy at his word, and by land expeditions sent from Monterey in 1772, happily established the existence of the Bay of San Francisco, which was afterwards explored by competent engineers entering from the sea, and to which the name of San Francisco, the founder of the Order, became permanently affixed.— Hon. J. W. Dwindle.