[ VIEW NORTHWEST FROM SPRECKELS' BUILDING.]

For years after the magnificent, all-inclusive claims of the Cabots at Labrador in 1497, nothing was known of the west coast of North America. Cabrillo felt his way along it in 1542, claiming it for Spain. In 1579, Francis Drake, fleeing from plundered Spanish galleons, tarried for repairs beside Cape Reyes, the Cape of Kings, and claimed the country, as New Albion, for Elizabeth of England. Although anchored in a cove within a mile of San Francisco Bay, he doubtless sailed away without guessing its existence behind the forest-covered mountains.

In 1602, Vizcaino, charting the west for Spain, as Gosnold was mapping the east for England, made stay in Drake's old anchorage, and named it the Port of San Francisco.

Notwithstanding the reiterated desire of the Spanish Crown that Mexico, or New Spain, should set about colonizing upper California, it was not till 1769 that the work was begun. Spain needed a harbor in which to retire on the way from the Philippines. The Russian fur-traders were heading down the coast. The French and the English were rumored to be nearing from the east. So it behooved Spain to be on the alert to maintain her right to the new territory.

José de Galvaez, Visitador of Spain, who had been sent to Mexico with powers extraordinary, "to examine and reform all branches of government," seized upon the project of colonization, and found the administrator of his plans in Padre Junipero Serra, of fragrant memory,—a Franciscan monk, who had all his life passioned to save Indians as a Tamerlane would have passioned to destroy them.

Spain's plan of colonization comprehended a triple series of establishments: the ecclesiastical or the mission, the military or the presidio, the civil or the pueblo. The theory of colonization carried the idea of a military and a religious conquest of the new lands. The Indians, whenever belligerent, were to be overcome by force; but as far as possible, they were to be drawn into the mission life by peaceable expedients.

In 1769, four expeditions, composed of soldiers, settlers, and Franciscan friars, set out from Mexico to enter upon the work of colonizing and civilizing California. If in the mists of coming ages the Æneid of California be lost, Spain may prove her sponsorship of the Californian province by the litany of seraphic and apostolic names given to mountain and mesa, to coast and cañon. Andalusian names of saints and angels chime wherever the padres stepped or stopped.

One of the four expeditions, pushing northward by land, unwittingly passed Monterey; and a fragment of the company, while out hunting, came suddenly in sight of the waters now known as the Golden Gate and the San Francisco Bay. For the name San Francisco was soon transferred to this greater water from the old port known to Drake and Vizcaino.

In the summer of 1776 a company of padres, soldiers, and families, with stock and seeds, arrived on the San Francisco peninsula, and built temporary shelter of brush and tulès plastered with mud. On September 17th, the feast of the stigmata of St. Francis, solemn possession was taken of the presidio in the name of Spain; and on October 4th, the day of St. Francis, the mission was formally dedicated. The cross was raised, the Te Deum was chanted, while bells and guns chorused to sea and sky.

The mission was in a little fertile valley four miles from the Presidio, near a small creek now filled in. It became known as the Mission de los Dolores, in honor of the sorrows of Mary.