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Show BY PATH AND TBAIL. 143 basco, and then Bishop of Yucatan in 1573, wrote the History of Yucatan, mastered the mysterious Quiche lan guage and deciphered the hieratic Maya alphabet, was a Franciscan. He left us the key to some of the strange inscriptions on the monuments of Central America. He deciphered the weird characters on the monuments of Mayapan and Chichin- Itza ; but for him, his intelligence and tireless industry, these gravings would perhaps re main a mystery for all time, like the Egyptian hiero glyphics before the discovery of the Eosetta stone and the magnificent research and ingenuity of Champollion. Father Pierre Cousin, a French Franciscan, was the first priest martyred for Christ in America, and the first bishop consecrated for America, 1511, was Garcias de Predilla, a Franciscan, who built his cathedral in San Domingo. But I am straying far afield and I call back my wandering pen to California and the southwest of our own country. By some mysterious centripetal force almost all the writings on the Franciscans of California converged to ward one personality Father Junipero Serra, a saintly priest. Hanging in the reception room of the ancient college of San Fernando, Mexico City, is an oil painting of the gentle priest executed one hundred and sixty years ago. It is a face full of human pathos, of tender ness, of spirituality: this painting and an enlarged da guerreotype in the old Franciscan College of Santa Bar bara, Cal., are all that remain to bring back the form and features of one who will for all time fill a conspicuous place in California history. Now, good and saintly as was Father Junipero, and great and many as are the praises sung of him, he was not superior, indeed, judged by the standard of the world, he was not the equal of |