Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

I

A glance back from the jubilee of the Golden State to the Old World calm of the Spanish Mission

Staff Correspondence by HUGH A. STUDDERT KENNEDY

T was on the 25th of September in the year of grace 1513 that Balboa, after a toilsome journey across the isthmus, approached the summit of the mountain range, the famous peak in Darien, and, leaving his soldiers at some little distance behind and advancing alone, was the first to behold the vast unknown ocean which, from its quiet waters, he named the Pacific. Surrounded by his soldiers, so the story goes, he walked later on into its waters, carrying in his right hand a naked sword and in his left the banner of Castile, and declared that the sea of the south and all the regions whose shores it bathed belonged to the crown of Spain.

The history of the Pacific coast begins here, yet more than one hundred and fifty years had to pass before the great land to the north, the Alta California of those days and the Golden State of today, came into the picture. Balboa and Cortez and all the conquistadores had ostensibly a dual purpose in their workthe acquisition of lands, and still more lands, for Spain and the saving of souls. Wherever the conquistadores went the priest was sure to follow. And so during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries missions were planted in all directions throughout Mexico and Lower California, but it was not until well on in the latter half of the eighteenth century that

Spain decided the time was ripe for the Spain decided the time was ripe for the conquest and the conversion of upper California.

The story of how it was done centers around one man, Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk, a man who, like Father Samson in Carlyle's "Past and Present," would have been a great man in almost any walk of life. As a young priest Junipero Serra had been noted as one of the most eloquent preachers in all Spain. It used, indeed, to be said of him that even his bitterest enemies would flock to hear him, and under the magic of his preaching would, for the time being, forget all else. He was, however, filled with the missionary spirit. The more distant the land, the more lonely the task, the more toilsome the country, the more, with all the spirit of the fanatic, he hugged the prospect to himself. In the year 1750 he came to Mexico, and labored patiently among its missions, preparing himself for the work which he paring himself for the work which he always had in view, namely, the carrying of the authority of the Church into the wild places of the North. And so when Don José Galvez, coming out to Mexico. in 1769 to take up the position of visitador-general of the country, decided that the time had come for the final conquest of upper California, he found a stanch coadjutor in the monk Junipero Serra. Together they worked out the plan of

The age-old wind-blown cypress at Monterey

conquest. They had nothing to guide them save a quaint sketch map made one hundred and sixty years before by Vizcaino, who had sailed many leagues up the coast and returned again. There were legends of a great bay in San Diego and another at Monterey, but the great bay of all, that of San Francisco, still remained undiscovered even in tradition.

Early in 1769 a start was made. Junipero Serra had as his colleague Don Gasper de Portola. They traveled overland, and on July 1, 1769, looking across the great bay of San Diego, they saw the two small ships which Galvez had sent to meet them lying out at anchor in its blue waters. Within a few days the mission of San Diego, the first in California, was established, and while Serra was building it Don Gasper marched overland seeking to discover the long-lost bay of Monterey. The age-old wind-blown cypress, a landmark even in those days, eluded him, but if he failed to find Monterey, he made another discovery which has made his name immortal; he found the bay of San Francisco.

The story goes that in the early days, when they were still fashioning the plan of campaign, Junipero Serra turned to Galvez and said, "Don José, you have named a mission San Diego de Alcala, another for San Carlos, a third for San Buena Ventura. Is there to be no llssion in honor of our own St. Francis?" To which Galvez replied, with all the nothing-for-nothing of a soldier, "If St. Francis desires a mission, let him show us his harbor." And so the appropriate legend has its appropriate sequel, and it is recorded that when Portola returned to Serra at San Diego and told of his great discovery, the Franciscan declared at once that the challenge flung out by Galvez had been answered. "Our father St. Francis," he cried, "has made his port known to us. We shall name it San Francisco in his honor and build a mission there."

The history of these days is full of just such incidents. The best that can be said of them is that if they are not true they should be. There is, for instance, the incident which centers around Portola's return, in which the fate of California is seen to hang dramatically upon a thread. All the joy of the reunion of

[graphic]
[graphic][merged small]

Serra and Portola could not conceal from the pioneers the fact that the whole enterprise was in desperate straits. Sickness and starvation menaced the mission in San Diego. The pioneers had not yet mastered the art of securing produce from one of the most fertile soils in the world. The great problem of water was largely unsolved. So desperate indeed was the situation that Portola ordered the friars and the soldiers to prepare for a return to Mexico. Serra pleaded with Lim for delay-for a month or so; for a week, at any rate; as a last resort, for one day. And so the story goes as it should go, that while the soldiers broke camp and got everything in readiness Serra prayed. All day long he watched. the blue waters of San Diego Bay dancing beneath the sunlit cloudless sky, and then, just as the sun went down and hope was being abandoned, a sail appeared on the horizon. It was a relief ship from Galvez, and the situation was saved.

However the relief was brought about, there can be no doubt that the re-establishment of the mission at San Diego was a turning-point in the history of California. With renewed vigor the work of exploitation was carried forward, and within a few years no fewer than twentytwo missions were established along the King's Highway, which was gradually made to wind its way between the Harbor of the Sun at San Diego and the Valley of the Moon at Sonoma. Within less than a year Monterey was rediscov

ered and the famous mission in Carmel established.

San Francisco followed very shortly afterwards, and so there gradually developed one of the most remarkable efforts in civilization the world has ever seen. The old padres flocked to the New World from Spain, bringing with them their seeds and their plants, their primitive tools, and their knowledge of agriculture, hardly won from very similar lands in old Spain.

The missions which thus began to be established throughout the length and breadth of California were all much after the same pattern. The church was the principal building, with its tower, its cupola, and its bells. Then came the residences, the quarters and guard-houses of the soldiers, and houses for the Indian converts; after which the warehouses, granaries, prisons, and cemeteries. The Indian houses were quite apart by themselves, within a walled inclosure called the rancheria. The entire mission and grounds were laid out after a fashion of a model town, with streets and alleys and wide open spaces.

What exactly was the position of the Indian converts is largely a matter of dispute. Some claim that they were virtual slaves, others that they were the potential founders of a new civilization. But, whatever their position, they certainly learned the art of agriculture and many other kinds of art; some were smiths, some were shoemakers, some were saddlers, and so it went.

The missions increased rapidly in wealth-indeed, to such an extent that at the height of their prosperity they despatched annually hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Church in Spain and Mexico. In 1830, some three years before their confiscation by Mexico, the missions were reputed to have more than one million head of cattle on mission lands, one hundred thousand horses, and vast numbers of other domestic animals. Their yearly crops of wheat averaged 150,000 bushels, while barley, oats, and other crops were in like proportion. Hides and tallow from California were sent as far afield as Boston, "all the way around the Horn."

The fall of the missions began with the fall of Spain, and when Mexico took the place of Spain in the New World the end of the missions was in sight. In 1833 the order of confiscation was carried out, and within a very few years nothing remained of the mission civilization save the crumbling ruins of its buildings. Between 1833 and the annexation of the country by the United States in 1848 California was given over to exploitation of Mexican soldiers of fortune. With the termination of the Mexican wars large numbers of these men united in a general invasion of Alta California. They seized the rich properties which the Franciscans had created, and an era of lawlessness followed that was only brought to an end when I mont, in 1847, planted the first A flag on the heights above Hollist

D

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

How Tommy Atkins Talked

ESPITE the complaint which the old lady made against the dictionary as reading matter, there is an undoubted fascination in any wordbook, and a special charm in all the dictionaries of slang and jargon. Few of the serious books about the strategy or the politics of the Great War can recall the days of 1914 to 1918 so vividly as this compilation of "Soldier and Sailor Words and Phrases." It is primarily the language of Tommy Atkins, not of the poilu nor of the "doughboy."

2

The sub-title intimates that it contains the slang of the trenches and of the flying men, and that American slang and language of the service have been added to British slang. Besides, there are the nicknames and titles of British regiments, and a list of battle honors awarded the units of the British army. It is admirably illustrated with two of Captain Bairnsfather's famous comic drawings, and two or three pictures from "Punch," including Frank Reynolds's drawing of a Prussian household having its morning hate.

Many of the terms are incomprehensible to Americans, and some of the definitions of American slang are rather surprising to us. It is noticeable that the compilers have not attempted to solve the question why a second lieutenant in the United States Army is called a "shavetail." Many explanations of this may be heard in the American Army, but they only agree in saying that, whatever its meaning, it intends no compliment to the second lieutenant. One phrase, given in this dictionary, shows that an English second lieutenant is sometimes called a One Pip. This refers to the one star, marking his rank, on his sleeve. The compilers struggled with the word "doughboy," saying that it is the American soldier's name for himself-that they were first called Sammys and then Teddys, neither of which they liked or would even adopt. They did not object, however, to the term "Yanks," and, indeed, they had done something to spread it, in the song "The Yanks Are Coming." Messrs. Fraser and Gibbons are, of course, too inclusive (like many American writers) in thinking that "doughboy" refers to any American soldier. Let them try calling a gunner, a trooper in the

1 Soldier and Sailor Words and Phrases. Compiled by Edward Fraser and John Gibbons. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $5.

cavalry, or a marine, a "doughboy" and
they will quickly learn that the word
is reserved for the infantry. And the
authors of the present book think that it
originated in the American Civil War,
and was suggested by large globular
brass buttons on the uniform, which had
a faint resemblance to dumplings. I
have heard many explanations of the
term, but this is a new one.

The word "loot" is given as a slang
term in the British navy for lieutenant,
and it is added that it is the usual Amer-
ican pronunciation of lieutenant. Per-
haps it represents the American abbrevia-
tion of the first syllable of that word.
Certainly no American has ever been able
to discover the letter "f" which every
Britisher finds as the third letter of the
word "lieutenant."

Some of this slang long antedates the Great War-it must go back to the times of Napoleon, if not of Cromwell. The term "showing a leg" is explained as follows:

Originally the bo'sun's mate's shout

Scene: Near Loos,
during the recent
great offensive.

Colonel Fitzshrapnel
receives the following
message from
"G.H.Q."-"Please
let us know, as soon
as possible, the
number of tins of
raspberry jam issued
to you last Friday"

By
Captain Bruce

Bairnsfather

Courtesy E. P. Dutton
& Co.

on board ship when calling hands in the morning: "Show a leg, show a leg, or a pusser's stocking!" Dating from the time when women were allowed to live on board ship, ostensibly as sailors' wives, a leg clad in a stocking put over the side of a hammock indicated that the occupant was a woman, who was allowed to remain until the men had cleared out.

The slang in this book has had its face washed, a clean collar put on, and is generally ready for inspection or church parade. All coarse or shocking expressions are carefully omitted, and since our armies swore terribly in Flanders, no less in our own time than in the days of Tristram Shandy, this dictionary has been reduced in size by at least one hundred per cent.

It appears that Portuguese troops were known among the English as the Pork and Beans, and a rather polite version is given of a story about them. This is that an order was issued: "In future the forces on our left will be referred to by all ranks as our Oldest Allies and not as heretofore as the 'Pork and Beans.'" The anecdote is also repeated of the

[graphic]
[graphic][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][subsumed]

How to make the study of Current History, Civics, English, and Rhetoric a fascinating task and of greater assistance for successful and useful living

W

IAM MCANDREW, Superintendent of Schools for the city of Chicago, said recently: "I congratulate you on the frequency with which I see The Outlook used as a text-book in the schools and on the interest and vivacity of the recitations in which it is used. I do not know of any single subject of more vital importance to the coming citizen than the study of actual National problems which will confront the voter when he reaches his majority. A clean, concise consideration of these questions such as is presented by The Outlook every week without writing down' to the supposed lower intelligence of the school makes a highly desirable text."

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

COLOUR, lantern-lit-tiny terraced rice fields-the purring wheels of rickshas- the little mat-tinged shops, the scented temples, where you take off your shoes-the villages where you want to play dolls with the brilliant paint-box childrenthe bobbing umbrellas, gay on a day of rain. . . . Japan.

China, where time is forgotten, under the bamboo awnings with the sun coming through in golden chinks-under the huge full moon over a lake full of dreaming temples China, that invented colour, cooking, gardens, tea, flowers, good servants, and the way to turn a bargain like an Emperor being gracious!

Why grow old and sane and rich and unadventurous? Why not swish back the pages of a thousand years-ten thousand miles-jump clear of your world and mine?

Back home, you'll have conversation for a lifetime.... and a queer empty little corner in your heart that nothing can ever fill again—except another trip!

10 Days to JAPAN 14 Days to CHINA Then MANILA

4 big Empress Liners Sailing fortnightly from Vancouver

Canadian Pacific

The World's Greatest Travel System

Offices in all large cities including: New York-344 Madison Ave.; Chicago-71 East Jackson; San Francisco-675 Market St.; Montreal-141 St. James St.

general who was shocked to discover that the Portuguese had no carrier-pigeons. He sent a coop of pigeons to the Portuguese headquarters, with the result that two days later a message was returned, saying, "We thank our allies, the British officers, for their hospitality; the birds were delicious." This is not exactly the version given in the book, but I venture to think it a little better.

I wish that the authors had been able to include another story about carrierpigeons which I have never seen in print. It concerns an attack made under the command of a British lieutenant-general, whose forces included an Australian division. As soon as the attack began, all systems of communication seemed to break down; the field telephones did not work, the buzzers did not buzz, and the runners did not run. There was dust and smoke in the distance, but the lieutenant-general, from his headquarters, could get no idea or word as to how the attack was progressing. At last he saw a solitary carrier-pigeon flying through the haze to the headquarters coop or roost. In his anxiety the general climbed the ladder himself and quickly unwound the paper from the leg of the little messenger. It contained these words, "I am tired of carrying this bloody bird!"

Fiction

E. L. P.

BIGGER AND BLACKER. By Octavius Roy Cohen. Little Brown & Co., Boston. $2.

Mr. Cohen's "Bummingham" darky stories are laughter-provoking and of a type quite their own. These new ones hit an original topic, common to all in this book, in the adventures of the dusky actors and "actorines" of the Midnight Pictures Corporation, Inc. We still have our old friends Florian Slappey the dude, Lawyer Chew, skinflint Seemore, and others, now entangled in the affairs of the marvelous comic movie people.

HERE COMES THE BRIDE. By Irvin S. Cobb. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

$2.

Taken one at a time, Mr. Cobb's talks about brides and grooms, the fad for saving life by extracting teeth, and other topics provocative of humor are good fun. We suggest one dose at a time, and therefore put the volume with other bedside books, to be taken when "so dispoged," as Mrs. Gamp took her gin.

PAID IN FULL. By Ian Hay. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $2.

Ian Hay is always cheerful. So is his polished villain in this bock. When the scamp, a cowardly and disgraced British officer, trades on the patriotic American fervor at the outbreak of war to pocket much money contributed for the soldiers by fashionable audiences at his war talks, he is at least amusing. But when he is moved to remorse and death by seeing

his little child for the first time the story drops into bathos of the real old Bowery Theater type.

THAT ROYLE GIRL. By Edwin Balmer. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $2.

For the murder mystery of this Chicago story and its love outcome one does not greatly care. But it has striking pictures of criminal gang life, brutal lawlessness, criminal court trials, and lawyers' court tactics.

THE SECRET ROAD. By John Ferguson. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $2.

A thrilling and sometimes horrible story of a threatened outbreak against British rule in India. Kipling, in “Kim,” introduced fiction readers to the Indian Secret Service as a new field for detective stories, and it has been well worked ever since. This is a good mystery tale and has also a strong feminine element.

THE RATIONAL HIND. By Ben Ames Williams. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $2.

A homely, somewhat austere story of the declining fortunes of a Maine family of farming people, whose spirit of almost fierce solidarity is inexorably kept alive by Esther, the dominating sister. One of the Hinds, her brother Leon, proved his rationality by infusing fresh blood into the family and eventually saving it, at the cost of an almost lifelong estrangement from Esther. Since the men in this novel are not satyrs nor the women drabs, it will win no literary prizes and will never receive a second look from a vice society. Mr. Williams must console himself with the knowledge that he has written a notable novel and created a character in Esther whom all New Englanders and many others will recognize

as a true type.

Travel and Description

LEAST KNOWN AMERICA. By A. Eugene Bartlett. The Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. $2.50.

Mr. Bartlett's wanderings, which ranged from the back country of the Southwest to Labrador and Newfound

land, brought him in touch with many odd people and customs as well as much interesting scenery. The most amazing and doubtless the most important part of the book is the report he gives of the mediavally minded Penitentes of New Mexico, a perverted offshoot of ancient Catholicism, discountenanced and disowned by the Church of to-day. These gloomy and terrible people, akin in spirit. to the old Flagellantes, practice scourging and even crucifixion in the name of religion, torturing themselves and, with the consent of the victims, one another. It sounds incredible, but it seems to be true; and they have succeeded, Mr. Bartlett points out, in securing a State law which makes it a legal offense to attack their mysterious sect in print or

In writing to the above advertiser, please mention The Outlook

« PredošláPokračovať »