While these events were transpiring Menendez had completed his equipment, and sailed with a fresh supply of men and means for his colonies in Florida. His first information of the disaster which had overtaken his posts on the St. Johns was received after he arrived at St. Augustine. So humiliating a disaster as the capture of three of his forts well fortified and garrisoned with four hundred trained men, was the occasion of no little mortification and vexation to this gallant knight, especially since the victors were the avengers of the former colonists, and the forces that accomplished the affair were so greatly outnumbered by his soldiers, who were also well defended by strong forts. To add to the discouragement the condition of the colony at St. Augustine was found to be most distressing. The garrison was nearly naked, the colonists half starved, and the attacks of the Indians growing more frequent and reckless as the weakness and despondency of the Spaniards became more apparent. The intrepid and indomitable spirit of Menendez did not bend under these obstacles and reverses which would have crushed a nature of ordinary mold. His extraordinary and comprehensive genius opened a way, in the midst of almost superhuman difficulties, for the maintenance of his colony and the extension of the Catholic faith, the objects to which his life was now devoted. Perceiving the insecurity of the garrisons at a distance from each other and the principal post, he wisely concluded to preserve his forces entire at St. Augustine, and thus maintain the colony and a base of operations. The spread of the Catholic faith he determined to secure by inducing the different tribes of Indians to receive and support one or more missionaries or teachers. At the earnest solicitation of Menendez large numbers of priests, friars, and brothers of the various religious orders of the Catholic Church had been sent to Florida by the King of Spain. Mission-houses were built all over the country from the Florida capes on the south to the Chesapeake on the north and the Mississippi on the west, to which these teachers, being mostly Franciscans, were sent. By the mildness of their manners, the promises of future joys and rewards which their teachings declared, and the interest excited by the introduction of the arts of civilized life, they gained a powerful ascendency over the native tribes, that promised at one period the conversion of the whole North American Indian race to the religion and customs of their Christian teachers. This would have been an achievement that would have amply compensated for all the efforts, treasure, and lives expended by the Europeans in the conquest of the New World. In fact it would have been a wonderful revolution that might well have been considered a miraculous dispensation of Providence.