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 Portola 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 and Leon, and Our Lady seemed to smile blessings on her Valley of Carmelo,