Had the Jesuit Fathers been content with the gradual but sure growth of their influence in fair Arizona and New Mexico, the conclusion of our story might have been different. As it was, however, their eagerness to extend their spiritual influence, and――alas, that we should have to say it!――to appropriate for the use of their order the gold and silver abounding in the mountains on the north of their new homes, led to the sending out of expeditions beyond the limits occupied by the tribes friendly to their interests. The wrath of the terrible Apaches, dwelling in the now desolated plains and mountain fastnesses on the north-west, was aroused; and in 1680 they swept down upon the Spanish settlements in such numbers as to carry all before them, compelling the missionaries to flee for their lives into Mexico. Again and again they returned with the same result, until at last the missions were finally abandoned, having wrought nothing but evil to those for whose benefit they were primarily established. After the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Apaches, the districts to the north-west of Mexico were for many years left unvisited by any Europeans, with the exception of a few venturesome miners, who, working at the risk of their lives in the north of the present province of Arizona, won for it its name, originally Arizuma, or the silver-bearing country. To atone for this pause in inland exploration, however, the coasts of both Upper and Lower California became thoroughly well known to Spanish pearl-fishers, who were followed, as the French _coureurs de bois_ had been in the North, by Roman Catholic missionaries, eager to be the first Christian teachers to win the ears of the natives. In the course of about half a century, many missions had been established in Lower California; and though, owing to the law forbidding priests to marry, no permanent root was taken in the country by them, and no homes gathered about their chapels, they paved the way for the advent of the settler, and exercised a refining influence, alike on the wild Spanish fishermen and the fierce and degraded Californian Indians. The beginning of the 18th century witnessed the first chapter of the thrilling drama of the fall of the Jesuits from the lofty position they had held throughout the world for two centuries. Expelled from Portugal in 1759, and from France in 1764, they flocked to Spain, hoping to find a refuge in the first home of their order. They were disappointed. In 1767, the edict for their banishment, alike from the mother country and her colonies, was issued by Charles III. of Spain, and the Jesuits both at home and abroad found themselves involved in one common ruin. Rallying as best they could from the blow which deprived them of all their property, and exiled them from the land of their adoption, those members of the disgraced order who had settled in Lower California resolved to begin a new crusade in the north of the same country.