Father Junipero Serra, founder of the missions in California. After the painting by Don Christoval Dia, in the Hall of California Pioneers, San Francisco. CHAPTER I SPANISH EXPLORATIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST THE closing years of the fifteenth century found the two leading maritime states of Europe, Spain and Portugal, engaged in a contest for the commerce of the Indies. The Portuguese, who had already explored a large part of the west coast of Africa, and were in possession of Papal decrees granting them a monopoly of the route around the southern end of Africa, persisted in their attempt to open a way to the south and east. Spain, acting on the advice of Columbus, became the pioneer of the western route to the Indies. Both nations finally succeeded in accumulating the wealth for which they longed, but the navigators of Portugal brought the first fruits of Oriental commerce to the Tagus, while the accidental discovery of the West Indies by Columbus gave the Spaniards a prior claim to the land which obstructed the way to India. With one portion of the explorations growing out of this discovery we shall deal in the present chapter. It soon became clear that the lands found by Columbus were not part of Asia, but they were thought to lie in the vicinity of that continent, and Spain deemed it advisable to occupy them with her colonies and thus create new centres of exploring activity. As the work of discovery progressed, so many and such great territories were revealed that a sort of colonizing madness seized upon the Spanish people, and throngs of adventurers followed in the wake of the caravels that bore Columbus, and other great explorers, to the West |