For sixty years after their first arrival at San Diego the Jesuits carried all before them in Upper California, and when the overthrow of the Spanish dominion in Mexico――which has been characterized as the death-blow of the mission system――took place in 1822, their settlements along the coast numbered as many as twenty-one. As in Lower California, however, the exclusiveness of the missionaries was fatal to the growth of permanent settlements: the emigration of Europeans to the districts belonging to them was discouraged; no inland colonies were founded; and, after living for years in an almost patriarchal state, more than 18,000 Indians owning no authority but theirs, the Fathers were deprived, by act of the Mexican Congress, of their plantations, and forbidden to employ the Indians to work for them. As a result, they were compelled, one by one, to abandon the country for which they had done so much. During the latter years of their sway, many speculators and trappers had, in spite of their opposition, penetrated into their territories, and the first seeds had been sown of many a now thriving community; but, before we relate the adventures of those travelers whose exploits entitle them to rank among our heroes, we must go back a couple of centuries to trace the further course of exploration in the Eastern States. CHAPTER VIII. THE PEQUOD WAR, AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS IN CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND PHILADELPHIA. WE left the New England colonies on the eve of the first great Indian war, which originated in the jealousy of the Pequods――a fierce race living between the Narragansetts and Mohegans of New England and the Iroquois of the East――at the sudden influx of foreigners into the fertile districts of Connecticut. Although, strictly speaking, it is scarcely within our province, we will give an outline of this terrible struggle, affording, as it does, a typical example of the general policy pursued toward each other by the natives and settlers in the New World. As early as 1634, a Captain Stone had been murdered, with all his crew, off Fort Good Hope, a Dutch outpost of Connecticut; and in the two years which followed, aggressions and robberies on the part of the Pequods were of frequent occurrence. The crisis was not reached, however, until 1636, when our old friend, Captain Oldham, fell a victim to the fury of the Indians. The details of this second tragedy will never be known, and it is more than possible that the outrage may not have been altogether unprovoked, the captain having been a man of hasty temper, disposed to carry matters with the natives with a very high hand.