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BY PATH AND TEAIL. 129 much trouble, he tells us in a letter written to a clerical friend, in finding words and idioms to explain the doc trines of Christianity, but with the help of the children he got on fairly well. The fathers asked to be left with the tribes, but Otondo declared that he could not take upon himself the responsibility of leaving a solitary European on the accursed shore and insisted on the priests returning to Mexico with him. Thus ended the first attempt to found a settlement in Lower California. What a singular fatality fol lowed in the wakes of nearly all the first settlements on the coasts of North America. Kaleigh's planta tion in Virginia was abandoned after four years of dis appointment and heart- breakings, though Grenville, the partner of Ealeigh, said the land was " the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven. " The first settlement in New England was even shorter lived and Goswald and Popham brought back their colonists from Maine, as did Otondo from California. The story of the hardships and sufferings from cold and scurvy of the first French set tlers on the St. Charles is paralleled by the history of Vizcaino's voyage and landing in the Bay of Monterey. Twenty years afterOtondo ' s failure England called off its first contingent of settlers from Tangiers. La Salle, the explorer, and one of the grandest men that ever trod the American continent, was shot by his own men and his dream of colonization ended. The pioneer Scotch colony at Darien failed absolutely, as did Selkirk's settle ment in the Canadian Northwest one hundred years ago. The colonization of Lower California, such as it was and is, was finally effected mainly through the persistent efforts and untiring zeal of two Jesuit priests, Eusebio Kino and Gian- Maria Salvatierra. Some day the lives |
