In 1769 came Junípero Serra--saint, hero, and Franciscan father. In him the romance of missionary enterprise finds embodiment; with him and his missions the colonization of Alta California began. The missions in the peninsula of Lower California were, by the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, left in charge of the Franciscans, and Serra's burning zeal for the conversion of the Indians led him to urge the prosecution of a long-cherished plan of the Government. This was to provide the Manila ships with good ports on the northwest coasts and to promote settlements there. There was a union of spiritual and physical forces--soldiers under the military government of Portolá co-operating with the missionaries under Serra. Four expeditions, two proceeding by sea and two by land, were reunited at San Diego, where, on July 16th, the noble missionary dedicated the first mission in Alta California. It was but two years later that the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel was founded, with solemn chants of Veni, Creator Spiritus and Te Deum Laudamus, and in the presence of many Indians. Serra, who had entered in a litter the land of promise where his zeal and courage were to accomplish so much, had already travelled toward San Francisco, crossing mountain and desert on foot, and establishing the Mission of San Carlos. The missions were firmly organized and devoutly conducted, and there were eighteen of them by the end of the century. Forty padres had gathered in these first industrial training-schools a population of 13,500 converted Indian neophytes, to whom they had taught the arts of civilization. San Gabriel became one of the richest missions. Its church has never been disused; to-day it welcomes strangers as in the time when it received those weary pilgrims, the founders of Los Angeles, who came from Loreto across the deserts of Colorado, on the route first taken by Anza through the San Gorgonio pass, and were provided by the hospitable fathers with all that was needed for rest and refreshment. The centre of the civilized and agricultural life of the district, San Gabriel, was a great material as well as spiritual force. It had its guard of ten soldiers and its three padres. Two of these, Cruzado and Sanchez, ministered side by side to the California Indians for thirty years, and the latter had a missionary experience of fifty-five years. The name of Los Angeles is first found in the Mission report of 1773. It is given to the river first named Porzinucula discovered by Portolá's expedition of 1769. This discovery, as recorded by Padre Crespi, was made upon the anniversary of the feast of our Lady of Angels. The Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles was founded in 1781. Till then there had been in the new country only missions and presidios, the military stations; but the settlement of colonies in pueblos was part of the original Spanish plan, and the necessity of obtaining additional supplies for the use of the presidios gave the needed stimulus.