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Show 144 BY PATH AND TRAIL. other Franciscan missionaries of the southwest, whose names one seldom erer hears. If the crucifixion of the flesh, with its appetites, desires and demands; if great suffering voluntarily assumed and patiently borne; if fatigue, hunger, thirst and exposure . endured uncom plainingly for God and a great cause, and if surrender ing freely life itself, for the uplifting of the outcast and the accursed, be the marks of heroic sanctity and heroic men, then there were greater saints and greater men on the desert missions than Junipero Serra. Alone, away from the eye and the applause of civilized man, these lonely priests in desert and on mountain trod the wine press of the fury of insult, mockery and derision. For weary years of laborious and unceasing sacrifice, amid perils as fearful as ever tried the heart of man, they walked the furrow to the martyr's stake, nor cast one halting, lingering look behind. Their zeal, their courage, their fidelity to duty in the presence of eminent warn ings ; their fortitude under hunger, weariness and exces sive fatigue; their angelic piety and purity of life, and their prodigious courage when confronted with torture and death, have built on the lonely desert a monument to St. Francis and to heroic Catholic charity, a monu ment which will endure till time shall be no more. Of these men were Fathers Garces, clubbed to death by the Yumas ; Martin de Arbide, burned alive by the Zunis ; Juan Diaz, tortured by the Mojaves, and thirty others, martyred for the faith. The history of the conversion and civilization of the Indians of the California coast, Arizona and New Mexico by the Franciscan fathers, forms one of the most brilliant chapters in the martyr-ology and confessorium of the imperishable Church of God. By their patience, tact and kindness, by the un- |