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Show 96 BY PATH AND TRAIL. to know the tribes * * * of the Apostolic labors of the missionaries they give very edifying accounts. M Some day, it is to be hoped, the Mexican government, follow ing the example of the Canadian parliament, which in 1858 printed the " Belations of the Jesuits " in Canada, will give to the world in editional form the letters of the Jesuits in Mexico and Lower California. However, from the books compiled from these letters, such as those of Fathers Venagas, Clavigero and Verre, we obtain a most pathetic and melancholy narrative of the woeful state of the tribes before the coming of the fathers. Apart from the divine courage and enthusiasm of the Spanish missionary fathers, nothing has excited my ad miration more than the learning and scholarship of the priests sent by the Catholic church for the evangelizing of savage tribes and barbarous peoples. From an off hand study of the brutish and deplorable ignorance of many of the tribes, it would be quite reasonable to as sume that men of simple faith, good health and a knowl edge of the catechism of the Council of Trent, would be best adapted for the redemption of a people " seated in darkness and in the shadow of death. " But Eome, with her accumulated wisdom of centuries and unparalleled experience of human nature under adverse conditions, trains her neophytes destined for foreign missions to the highest possible efficiency. We are not, then, when acquainted with her methods of education, surprised to find among her priests, living amid the squalid surround ings of savagery, men of high scholarship and special ists in departmental science. Of these was Father Sigis-mundo Taravel, a pioneer of the California missions. In 1729 he established the mission of St. Rose, near the Bay of Palms. Before volunteering for the California |