Yet they were happy, peaceful days for California.  The vagrant keels of prying Commerce had not, as yet, ruffled the lordly gravity of her bays.  No torn and ragged gulch betrayed the suspicion of golden treasure.  The wild oats drooped idly in the morning heat, or wrestled with the afternoon breezes.  Deer and antelope dotted the plain.  The water-courses brawled in their familiar channels, nor dreamed of ever shifting their regular tide.  The wonders of the Yo-Semite and Calaveras were as yet unrecorded.  The Holy Fathers noted little of the landscape beyond the barbaric prodigality with which the quick soil repaid the sowing.  A new conversion, the advent of a Saint’s day, or the baptism of an Indian baby, was at once the chronicle and marvel of their day.

At this blissful epoch, there lived, at the Mission of San Pablo, Father Jose Antonio Haro, a worthy brother of the Society of Jesus.  He was of tall and cadaverous aspect.  A somewhat romantic history had given a poetic interest to his lugubrious visage.  While a youth, pursuing his studies at famous Salamanca, he had become enamored of the charms of Dona Carmen de Torrencevara, as that lady passed to her matutinal devotions.  Untoward circumstances, hastened, perhaps, by a wealthier suitor, brought this amour to a disastrous issue; and Father Jose entered a monastery, taking upon himself the vows of celibacy.  It was here that his natural fervor and poetic enthusiasm conceived expression as a missionary.  A longing to convert the uncivilized heathen succeeded his frivolous earthly passion, and a desire to explore and develop unknown fastnesses continually possessed him.  In his flashing eye and sombre exterior was detected a singular commingling of the discreet Las Casas and the impetuous Balboa.

Fired by this pious zeal, Father Jose went forward in the van of Christian pioneers.  On reaching Mexico, he obtained authority to establish the Mission of San Pablo.  Like the good Junipero, accompanied only by an acolyth and muleteer, he unsaddled his mules in a dusky canon, and rang his bell in the wilderness.  The savages—­a peaceful, inoffensive, and inferior race—­presently flocked around him.  The nearest military post was far away, which contributed much to the security of these pious pilgrims, who found their open trustfulness and amiability better fitted to repress hostility than the presence of an armed, suspicious, and brawling soldiery.  So the good Father Jose said matins and prime, mass and vespers, in the heart of Sin and Heathenism, taking no heed to himself, but looking only to the welfare of the Holy Church.  Conversions soon followed, and, on the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was baptized,—­an event which, as Father Jose piously records, “exceeds the richnesse of gold or precious jewels or the chancing upon the Ophir of Solomon.”  I quote this incident as best suited to show the ingenuous blending of poetry and piety which distinguished Father Jose’s record.