Under the leadership of Father Junipero Serra, appointed president of all the missions to be established in Upper California, the Fathers went forth to set up the cross among the Ahwashtes, Altahmos, Romanans, Klamaths, Modoes, Shastas, Eurocs, and others of the almost countless tribes forming the two great families of the Central and Northern Californians. Dividing into two parties, the first expedition started for Northern California by land in 1768. The first division, under Captain Rivera of Moncado, after a terrible journey across country, arrived at the site of the present San Diego (N. lat. 32° 47′, W. long. 117° 8′) on the 14th of May, 1768, and there founded the first settlement of white men in Upper California. The second party, under Father Junipero himself, arrived at the new colony on the 1st of July, and the first North Californian convert was baptized on the 16th of December of the same year. Early in January, 1769, a second detachment of Jesuits started in three vessels――the _San Carlos_, the _San Antonio_, and the _San José_――to reach San Diego by sea. The first arrived on the 1st May, having lost all her crew, except two or three officers, from scurvy and famine; the second put into port at San Diego on the 10th April, with eight men missing; and the third was never again heard of. Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE, SAN FRANCISCO. After a rest of a few weeks, the survivors of the unfortunate fleet, their numbers augmented by a party of emigrants from Sonora and an escort of Lower Californian Indians, started, under the command of Don Gaspar de ♦Portola, who had been appointed military governor of the new country, for the North, intending to find the Bay of Monterey, and there found a second branch of the mission. The pioneers failed to find Monterey, but on the 25th October, 1769, they discovered the now famous harbor of San Francisco, justly named the gem of the Pacific, its Golden Gate, the outlet connecting it with the ocean, forming the entry to the finest seaport on the western seaboard of America. Land-locked as it was, the noble bay had escaped the notice of previous explorers, and even now its great importance seems scarcely to have been recognized. Naming it San Francisco, after the titular saint of the Jesuits, Portola led his party back to San Diego, and for six long years the site of the present capital of California was left to the undisturbed possession of the natives. ♦ ‘Portala’ replaced with ‘Portola’ Illustration: CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO. (1885.)