What a wonderful movement was that wave of religious zeal, of proselyting fervor, that accompanied the great colonizing efforts of Spain in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. _Conquistadores and friars_--one as earnest as the other--swept over the New World. Cortés was no more bent upon his conquests than Ugarte, Kino and Escalante were upon theirs; Coronado had his counterpart in Marcos de Nizza, and Cabrillo in Junipero Serra. The one class sought material conquest, the other spiritual; the one, to amass countries for their sovereign, fame and power for themselves, wealth for their followers; the other, to amass souls, to gain virtue in the sight of God, to build churches and crowd them with aborigines they had "caught in the gospel net." Both were full of indomitable energy and unquenchable zeal, and few epochs in history stand out more wonderfully than this for their great achievements in their respective domains. Mexico and practically the whole of North and South America were brought under Spanish rule, and the various Catholic orders--Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites--dotted the countries over with churches, monasteries and convents that are today the marvel and joy of the architect, antiquarian and historian. Alta California felt the power of these movements in three distinct waves. The two first were somewhat feeble,--the discovery by Cabrillo, and rediscovery sixty years later by Vizcaino,--the third powerful and convincing. During this epoch was started and carried on the colonization of California by the bringing in of families from Mexico, and its Christianization by the baptizing of the aborigines of the new land into the Church, the making of them real or nominal Christians, and the teaching of them the arts and crafts of civilization. Twenty-one missions were established, reaching from San Diego on the south, to Sonoma on the north, and great mission churches and establishments rose up in the land, of which the padres, in the main, were the architects and the Indians the builders. Second in this chain--the next mission establishment north of the parent mission of San Diego--was San Luis Rey, dedicated to St. Louis IX, the king of France, who reigned from 1226 to 1270, renowned for his piety at home and abroad, and who was especially active in the Crusades. He was canonized by Pope Boniface VIII, in 1297, in the reign of his grandson, Phillip the Fair, and his _day_ is observed on the 25th of August.