The surveys of this expedition are not of much value to the present age, as the nautical instruments of that period were not very true; but Cabrillo’s explorations none the less assisted those who came after him, who, with instruments equally defective, hit his points with tolerable accuracy, although there was generally an error in his latitude by observation of about a hundred miles.
Cabrillo at last worked up towards San Francisco, but the heavy surf and iron-bound coast, together with the thick fogs that hang about the bay, no doubt prevented his entering, and he resolved on returning and awaiting a more favourable season; but anchoring for repairs in one of the harbours of the Santa Barbara Islands, the old sailor died, probably from fatigue and exposure to the damps and north-west winds.
The command of the expedition then devolved upon Ferrelo, who bravely made another attempt; but failing in effecting a landing, he returned to Natividad, after a voyage of 283 days. Sir Francis Drake next visited California in 1579; Juan de Fuca in 1595, and Sebastian Vizcaino in 1602. This latter entered the bay of San Francisco, though probably he was not its discoverer, and proceeded in boats as far as where Benicia now stands.
In 1769 the settlement of Upper California was commenced by Spanish priests at San Diego, and several small expeditions followed in succession until 1776, when the Roman Catholic missionaries Palou and Cambon landed in San Francisco, and established their head-quarters in that place. The settlement at this period was known by the name of Yerba Buena, from the presence of a medicinal herb which abounded in the neighbourhood, and which was held in high estimation by the Indians. Here the missionaries erected a church and other buildings, of “adobes,â€� or sun-dried bricks. The Mission flourished rapidly. The Indians soon learnt, under the tuition of the Padres, the advantages of cultivating the earth; and those of them that embraced the Catholic religion began to drink rum, and value beads, as is usual with converted savage tribes. Mexican settlers also made their appearance, and the richest portions of the country were soon appropriated by them. Gradually cattle and sheep were introduced, which in their wild state increased rapidly without much trouble to their owners, who, having nothing to do but to kill their meat and eat it, basked in the sun like lazy dogs as they were, and thought themselves the happiest of men;—and it is difficult for any one to prove they were not.
By the year 1831, the number of Christian baptisms amounted to about 7000. After this period, the Indians, from some cause or other, perhaps from a scarcity of rum, altered their minds on the subject; and although a fresh supply of priests arrived, the number of converts rapidly decreased, so much so that in the eight years preceding the discovery of gold, only 400 savages were caught and converted. And if one may judge from the specimens of converted Indians that are to be found here and there in California at the present date, one has no reason to regret that the efforts of the priests were unattended with success; for, however we may deplore the abject misery and degradation of the aboriginal tribes, it is not by the mummery of a form that such souls can be redeemed, or such unhappy natures be remodeled. On the contrary, their small glimpses of civilisation offer to their view both virtues and vices equally unknown before; then, left untrammeled to choose between the two, we see the baptised savage follow his impulses until he sinks so low in the scale of men, that his original degradation stands out almost as virtue beside him.
A holy task is that of the missionary, and bravely carried out. Let him still strive to reclaim the savage, and bring his soul to God; but yet take heed that the work be finished, for I have seen in my day converted tribes that were a mockery on all that sanctifies the missionary work, and had better, one would think, have eaten each other’s bodies in primeval irresponsibility, than, having been only half awakened to a sense of right, but fully so to a knowledge of all that is wrong, have been left to grovel in the vices that most debase humanity. How much more care does it not require to avert the steps of the converted savage from crime, than that of others of your flock!—is he not naturally more debased, more prone to adopt the broad and easy path that ever lies plain and palpably before him? Can you take a young tiger from the jungle, and having caged him, soften his natural propensities easily? You can do so only by unceasing watchfulness and coercion; cease these, and your tiger is a tiger again, as nature asserts her sway. Somewhat so it is with the savage you allure from the freedom of his hunting-ground; you show him the advantages of domestic life, and the means of applying to his benefit the soil around him; you adapt to his comprehension the simple outlines of religion, by pointing out to him that, to live in brotherhood and amity is good (and beneficial); that to wage war and hate and eat one’s enemy is bad (and detrimental); that a good Supreme Being, who can reward or punish, has said so, and that the evidence of this Supreme Being reigns, as even a savage can see, in all around. The simple aborigine accords you his belief; regretfully, perhaps, he leaves his wild prairie and the baked heads of his enemies, and will worship the “Great Spirit,â€� whose presence the poetry of his nature enables him to understand; sooner or later you baptise him, and you have your savage in the first stage of Christianity. But now you have a savage nature on your hand; you have implanted innocently what with his impulses may grow to avarice if you leave him to himself; for if he cultivates the land among the civilised he will cheat—if cheat, wrangle—if wrangle, murder; for the steps to crime are rapid in such a constitution; but if he drinks, the savage ever becomes too brutalised for reclamation.
In what does this fault lie? Not so much that the man is so constituted that he must thus err, but that, like the tiger I have used for illustration, his propensities must be ever watched and guided. The converted savage is never so alienated from his natural impulses that he can be left;—yet he is left.
If there is fault in this, it is not, I know, on the part of those who work; but to those who direct these things it might be said that it is better to convert a few, and in reality increase Christ’s fold, than sign a million with His holy symbol, yet bring their souls no nearer heaven. Yet how fruitlessly one may argue. To whom is the reproach, that while we may add our mite to aid the propagation of the Gospel abroad, we dare not relieve gaunt misery in the street at home, for fear of encouraging systematic mendicity; as if, forsooth, the blame of this belonged by right alone to those who practised it.
There are black missionaries who work as faithfully as white, and it is a startling fact to find that many of these, leaving their coloured brethren at home to the care of our white missionaries, are in our midst, attempting to alleviate, by God’s help, the misery and ignorance that exist in our great towns; and if the most festering wounds have the first claim upon the surgeon’s skill, the place of these black missionaries is here, God knows!
Why shall it still be said, and said again of us who are not loth to relieve, that our aims are misdirected from want of judgment and from ill-government? And why are the talents and energies of so many churchmen, whose beck and nod the charitable, to a great extent, obey, still turned to the Propagation of the Gospel abroad, when it requires but the opening of a proper channel at home to rid us of this great reproach?