Chimes of Mission Bells | Page 9

Ayala was Father Vincente de Santa
Maria who, with Fathers Paloú and Cambón, planted a Mission Cross
and founded Mission Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, which has
withstood so many ravages of time and change, of man and elements.
The seventh Mission was San Juan Capistrano, founded November 1,
1776, by Father Lasuén. This Mission was also a very flourishing
Mission, the Indians were laborers in its construction, which lasted
nearly fourteen years.
Mission Santa Clara was the eighth to be established. It was founded on
January 12, 1777. The original lines of this once beautiful Mission are
almost entirely changed but like all its sister missions it still retains
much of its dear old atmosphere, and can boast of the tomb of Father
Magin Catalá who died there in 1836 "in the odor of sanctity." Mission
Santa Clara was founded by Father Tomas de la Peña y Saradia; and its
history is fascinating and romantic. The Mission Cross which Father de
la Peña y Saradia planted here, is still standing.
The ninth Mission was San Buenaventura, founded also by Junipero
Serra in person, in company with Governor Felipe de Neve, on Easter
Sunday of March 31, 1783.
From San Buenaventura, Junipero Serra and Governor de Neve
marched to what is now Santa Barbara. Here the Indians were
numerous and more intelligent than any in California, where the
Indians were far denser than either the Incas of South America or the
Aztecs of Mexico. Delays, caused by military differences, retarded the
foundation of Santa Barbara Mission, which would have been the tenth,
but Junipero Serra planted a Mission Cross and selected the site on
which it was destined to be founded four years after his death. From
here Serra returned to Carmelo; his journeys from one Mission to
another being always on foot.
And here we must pause: We have come in our narrative to that
momentous year in the history, not only of the missions, but of
California. The year when. Junipero Serra, true priest of God,
christianizer, civilizer, wonderful among wonderful pioneers, or as
Governor Gaspar de Portolá had spoken of him years before, "the
humblest, bravest man of God I ever 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 mission gardens, while
the sun of Spanish glory was still in the ascendency and no threatening
omens of the fall of Spanish or Franciscan power, or nightmares of the
Acts of Secularization disturbed the cloudless skies, while the Presidio
Real of Monterey bore the arms of the Spanish King and the Capilla
Real do San Carlos was thronged with gallant officers and brave men
of the Royal Army and Navy of Castile