What do you admire in the great navigator, whose fortunate discovery two hemispheres are now preparing to celebrate? His wisdom? his valor? his boldness? While he possessed all these in heroic grade, it is surely not these which, in him, captivate us, but his faith, his marvelous faith, which sustained him erect and firm in the midst of innumerable obstacles, betrayed by treachery, mocked and harassed by adverse fortune, and he held it against machinations and dangers, until he planted it securely in the land of his dreams. Well, of this same faith, which caused the inspired mariner to triumph over enemies and obstacles and the mysterious dangers of the sea, there are also found examples in these, our regions, which ought not to be held unworthy of esteem because they are buried in the humble chronicles of a Province; for even thus, in solitude, a diamond gleams more brightly. When the immortal Genoese entered the service of Spain, there had just (1483) taken the Franciscan habit in Salamanca, a youth of such precocity that, at thirteen years, he had already graduated in philosophy. At sixteen, dedicated to the study of theology, he made such progress in this science and in Greek and Hebrew, that, with no little credit to his order, he occupied--through many years--the professorship in his convent, where, as is well known, Columbus found a more friendly reception than among the proud professors of the famous university. From Guatemala, whither the learned teacher went in 1539 to occupy himself with the instruction of the wild Indians, he passed to Mexico, called to serve as _Consultor_ to the Holy Office. The snows of a hundred winters already whitened his head, but as the volcanoes which display a snowy crown to conceal the forge where are smithed their glowing thunderbolts, so the venerable centennarian priest. He scarcely tarried at the vice-regal court; like a flaming arrow he went to Michoacan, Zacatecas, and Durango, whose inhabitants enjoyed the last ministrations of the philosopher, theologian, humanist, and eminent preacher, whose name was Diego Ordoñez, and who, at one hundred and seventeen years of age, seated in a chair because he could not stand, died in Sombrerete, preaching to the Indians--he who had been the pride of the convent at Salamanca and the venerated oracle of theologians and inquisitors. ANTONIO DE ROA. Two methods were employed by him, or rather one only, in converting so untamed and rude a people. No one is ignorant, that in New Spain the worship of the Holy Cross has ever been general. Be the mountain beautiful or barren, lofty or low, the natives were accustomed to rear a cross upon it. Where roads forked they set it up, and also in the streets and plazas, that they might venerate it at every step and bow before it. With greater reason, therefore, believed Father Roa, ought the sacred emblem to be multiplied upon the rugged mountain trails, which, at first glance, had so much discouraged him.