In 1769, four expeditions, composed of soldiers, settlers, and Franciscan friars, set out from Mexico to enter upon the work of colonizing and civilizing California. If in the mists of coming ages the Æneid of California be lost, Spain may prove her sponsorship of the Californian province by the litany of seraphic and apostolic names given to mountain and mesa, to coast and cañon. Andalusian names of saints and angels chime wherever the padres stepped or stopped. One of the four expeditions, pushing northward by land, unwittingly passed Monterey; and a fragment of the company, while out hunting, came suddenly in sight of the waters now known as the Golden Gate and the San Francisco Bay. For the name San Francisco was soon transferred to this greater water from the old port known to Drake and Vizcaino. In the summer of 1776 a company of padres, soldiers, and families, with stock and seeds, arrived on the San Francisco peninsula, and built temporary shelter of brush and tulès plastered with mud. On September 17th, the feast of the stigmata of St. Francis, solemn possession was taken of the presidio in the name of Spain; and on October 4th, the day of St. Francis, the mission was formally dedicated. The cross was raised, the Te Deum was chanted, while bells and guns chorused to sea and sky. The mission was in a little fertile valley four miles from the Presidio, near a small creek now filled in. It became known as the Mission de los Dolores, in honor of the sorrows of Mary. [Illustration THE DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY. FROM THE PAINTING BY A.F. MATHEWS.] Hostile tribes from the south had lately fallen upon the Indians of the peninsula, firing their _rancherias_, murdering many of the inhabitants, and terrorizing the rest into flight. So the savages proved scarce at first. Even in 1802 the Indians at the Mission numbered only about eight hundred. But these natives, like all the Californian Indians, though quite docile, proved stupid and brutish and lazy. They made little progress from savagery to the state of _gentes de razon_, or "reasonable beings," fit to populate the pueblos. This mission _régime_, however futile it may have been, however formal and external its religious training, seems to have touched upon some of the educational and sociological thought of our own time. It made use of the wisdom Spain had learned from her Roman conquerors--the taking of the conquered into full partnership. The idea of the daily contact of superior with inferior; of community of property and co-operation in labor; of the union of manual work with mental drill--all these were rudely exemplified in the mission life. Sixty years was the span of the experiment, a brief time for an effort in civilization. [Illustration MISSION DOLORES. BUILT IN 1776.]