in the shape of Russians from Alaska. They brought down a colony of
Kodiak Indians, or Aleuts, and established themselves at Fort Ross,
north of San Francisco. The Spaniards then founded the missions of San
Rafael and Solano in front of the Russians, to head them off, as the
priest makes the sign of the cross to ward off Satan. Trading with the
Russians was forbidden, but, nevertheless, the Russian vessels, on one
pretext or another, made repeated visits to the Bay of San Francisco.
The Spaniards had no boats in the bay, and could not prevent the
ingress of the Russian and American traders. One of the singular facts
in connection with the missions is that the Padres made no use of the
sea, and the missions usually kept no boats at all, and so the Spanish
officials were forced to receive in friendliness many encroachments
which they were powerless to prevent.
In 1842, as the seals grew scarce around Bodegas Head, the Russians, to
the great satisfaction of the Spaniards, disappeared as suddenly as
they came. The joy of the missions was short-lived, for seven years
later gold was discovered, California was ceded to the United States,
and the most remarkable invasion known in history followed. Over the
mountains, across the plains, by the Isthmus, and by the Horn they
came, that wonderful procession which Bret Harte has made so familiar
to us--Truthful James, Tennessee's Partner, Jack Hamlin, John Oakhurst,
Flynn of Virginia, Abner Dean of Angels, Brown of Calaveras, Yuba Bill,
Sandy McGee, the Scheezicks, the Man of No Account, and all the rest.
And the California of the gambler and the gold-seeker succeeds the
California of the Padre.
Numerous causes had meanwhile contributed to the decline of the Spanish
missions. They had been supported at first by a Pious Fund, obtained
by subscriptions in Mexico and Spain. After the separation of these
two countries, this fund was lost, its interest being regularly
embezzled by Mexican officials, and, finally, the principal, it is
said, was taken in one lump by the President, Santa Ana. Still the
missions were able to hold their own until the Mexican Government
removed the Indians from the control of the Padres, for the benefit, I
suppose, of the "Indian ring." The secular control of the native
tribes was, in Mexican hands, an utter failure. The Indians, now no
longer compelled to work, no longer well fed and comfortably clothed,
were scattered about the country as paupers and tramps. The missions,
after repeated interferences of this sort, fell into a rapid decline,
and at the time that California was ceded to the United States, not one
of them was in successful operation. A few of the churches are still
partly occupied, as at San Luis Obispo, San Capistrano, and San Miguel.
The Mission of Santa Barbara is still intact, and has yet its little
bands of monks. A few, like San Carlos, have been partially saved or
partially restored, thanks to the loving interest of Father Casanova
and others; but the Indians are gone, and neither wealth nor influence
remains with the missions. Most of them are crumbling ruins, and have
already taken their place as curiosities and relics of the past. Some
of them, as the noble San Antonio de Pádua and the stately San Luis
Rey, are exquisitely beautiful, even in ruins. Of others, as San
Rafael, not a trace remains, and its spot can be kept green only in
memory. It is said that at San Antonio, a mission once numbering
fourteen hundred souls, and rearing the finest horses in California,
the last priest lived all alone for years, and supported himself by
raising geese and selling the tiles from the mission roof. When he
died, ten years ago, no one was left to care for his beloved mission,
which is rapidly falling into utter decay.
[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--side of the chapel,
with the old pear-trees.]
So faded away the California of the Padre, and left no stain on the
pages of our history.
[1] Address at the Teachers' Institute at Monterey, California,
September, 1893.
[2] This stretch of water, as explained below, lies entirely outside of
what is now known as San Francisco Bay.
[3] The limits of San Francisco Bay, as now understood, were
ascertained at the time of the founding of the mission, and the name
was then formally adopted.
[4] Bret Harte.
THE CONQUEST OF JUPITER PEN.
In a cleft of the high Alps stands the Hospice of the Great Saint
Bernard. Its tall, cold, stone buildings are half-buried in ice in the
winter, while even in summer the winds, dense with snow, shriek and
howl as they make their way through the notch in the mountain. Its
little lake, cold and dark, frozen solid in winter, is covered with
cakes of floating ice under the sky of July. The scanty grass around
it forms a thick, low turf, which is studded with bodiless blue
gentians, primroses, and other Alpine flowers. Overhanging the lake
are the frost-bitten crags of the Mountain of Death; and the other
mountains about, though less dismally named, are not more cheerful to
the traveler. Along the lake margin winds the narrow bridle-path,
which follows rushing rivulets in zigzags down steep flower-carpeted
slopes to the pine woods of Saint Rémy, far below. Among the pines the
path widens to a wagon-road, whence it descends through green pastures,
purple with autumnal crocus, past beggarly villages, whose houses crowd
together, like frightened cattle in a herd, through beech woods,
vineyards, and grain-fields, till at last it comes to its rest amid the
high stone walls of the old city of Aosta, named for Augustus Caesar.
Above Aosta are the sources of the river Po, one of the chief of these
being the Dora Baltea, in a deep gorge half-hid by chestnut-trees. It
is twenty miles from the lake to the river--twenty miles of wild
mountain incline--twenty miles from Switzerland to Italy, from the
eternal snows and faint-colored flowers of the frigid zone, to the
dust, and glare of the torrid.
The Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard stands thus in a narrow mountain
notch, with only room for itself and its lake, while above it, on
either side, are jagged heights dashed with snow-banks, their summits
frosted with eternal ice.
[Illustration: The Great Saint Bernard.]
It is a large stone building, three stories high, beside the two attic
floors of the steep, sloping roof. A great square house of cold, gray
stone, as unattractive as a barn or a woolen-mill, plain, cold, and
solid. At one end of the main building is a stone addition precisely
like the building itself. On the other side of the bridle-path is an
outbuilding--a tall stone shed, "the Hotel of Saint Louis," three
stories high, as plain and uncompromising as the Hospice is. The front
door of the main building is on the side away from the lake. From this
door down the north side of the mountain the path descends steeply from
the crest of the Pennine Alps to the valley of the Rhone, even more
swiftly than the path on the south side drops downward to the valley of
the Po.
As one approaches the Hospice he is met by a noisy band of great dogs,
yellow and white, with the loudest of bass voices, barking incessantly,
eager to pull you out of the snow, and finding that you do not need
this sort of rescue, apparently equally eager to tear you to pieces for
having deceived them. Classical names these dogs still bear--names
worthy of the mountain long sacred to Jupiter, on which the Hospice is
built--Jupitère, Junon, Mars, Vulcan, Pluton, the inevitable Leon, and
the indomitable Turc, and all have for the traveler such a greeting as
only a band of big, idle dogs can give. These dogs are not so large
nor so well kept as the Saint Bernard dogs we see in American cities,
but they have the same great head, huge feet and legs, and the same
intelligent eye, as if they were capable of doing anything if they
would only stop barking long enough to think of something else.
The inside of the house corresponds to its outer appearance. Thick,
heavy triple doors admit you to a cold hall floored with stone.
Adjoining this is a parlor, likewise floored with the coldest of stone,
and this parlor is used as the dining-room and waiting-room for
travelers. Its walls are hung with pictures, many of them valuable
works of art, the gifts of former guests, while its chilly air is
scantily warmed by a small fireplace, on which whoever will may throw
pine boughs and fragments of the spongy wood of the fir. By this fire
the guests take their turn in getting partly warmed, then pass away to
shiver in the outer wastes of the room.
[Illustration: Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard.]
In this room the travelers are served with plain repasts, princes and
peasants alike, coarse bread, red wine, coffee, and boiled meat;
everything about the table neat and clean, but with no pretense at
pampering the appetite. You take whatever you please without money and
without price. Should you care to pay your way, or care to help on the
work of the Hospice, you can leave your mite, be it large or small, in
a box near the door of the chapel. The guest-rooms are plain but
comfortable--a few religious pictures on the walls; tall, old-fashioned
bedsteads, with abundant feather-beds and warm blankets. For one night
only all persons who come are welcome. The next day all alike, unless
sick or crippled, must pass on.
There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them young
men, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent and
generously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winter
breaks down their health before they are old. When they become unable
to carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountains
to Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There are
beautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is free
from severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the time
white with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for the
commonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, a
raging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced with
impunity.
We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to Saint
Rémy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, where
the pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from Saint
Rémy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time we
reached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was only
whitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need to
dig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, and
barked again.
Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came up
the mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italian
peasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two with
friends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home.
Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was a
little girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in her
hands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep path
in the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only for
summer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child was
almost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child in
their arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered her
shoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them down
the mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This was
a simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a very
touching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives.
In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast.
From November to May the gales are incessant. The snow piles up in
billows, and in the whirling clouds all traces of human occupation are
obliterated. There are many peasants and workingmen who go forth from
Italy into Switzerland and France, and who wish to return home when
their summer labors are over. To these the pass of the Great Saint
Bernard is the only route which they can afford. The long railway
rides and the great distances of the Simplon and the Saint Gotthard
would mean the using up of their scanty earnings. If they go home at
all, they must trust their lives to the storms and the monks, and take
the path which leads by the Hospice. So they come over day after day,
the winter long. No matter how great the storm, the dogs are on the
watch. In the last winter, of the many who came, not one was lost.
[Illustration: The Hospice in winter.]
This is the Hospice as it stands to-day. I come next to tell its story
and the story of its founder. I tell it, in the most part, from a
little volume in French, which some modest and nameless monk of the
Hospice has compiled from the old Latin records of the monks who have
gone before him. This volume he has printed, as he says, "for the use
of the faithful in the parishes which lie next the Alps, and which, in
his time, the good Saint Bernard[1] passed through." This story I must
tell in his own spirit, in some degree at least, else I should have no
right to tell it at all.
In the tenth century, he informs us, the dark ages of Europe could
scarcely have been darker. Weak and wicked kings, the dregs of the
worn-out blood of Charlemagne, misruled France, while along the
northern coast the Normans robbed and plundered at their will. Even
the church had her share of crimes and scandals. In this dark time,
says the chronicle, "God, who had promised to be with His own to the
end of the centuries, did not fail to raise up in that darkness great
saints who should teach the people to lift their eyes toward heaven; to
rise above afflictions; not to take the form of the world for a
permanent habitation, and to suffer its pains with patience, in the
prospect of eternity."
[Illustration: Jupitére.]
It happened that in the days of King Raoul, in the Castle of Menthon,
on the north bank of the lake of Annécy, in Savoy, in the year 923,
Bernard de Menthon was born. His father was the Baron Richard, famous
among the noblemen of the time, while his mother, the Lady Bernoline,
was illustrious for virtues. The young Bernard was a fair child, and
his history, as seen from the perspective of his monkish historian,
shows that even in his earliest youth he was predestined for saintship.
Even before he could walk, the little child would join his hands in the
attitude of supplication, and murmur words which might have been
prayers. While still very young, he brought in a book one day and
asked his mother to teach him to read, and when she would not, or could
not, he wept, for the books in which even then he delighted were the
prayer-books of the church.
He grew up bright and beautiful, and his father was proud of him, and
determined that he should take his part in public life. But Bernard's
thoughts ran in other channels. He spent his moments in copying
psalms, and in writing down the words of divine service which he heard.
Even in his seventh year he began to practice austerities and
self-castigation, which he kept up through his life. He chose for his
model Saint Nicholas, the saint who through the ages has been kind to
children. Him he resolved to imitate, and to walk always in his steps.
The University of Paris had been founded by Charlemagne more than a
century before, and this university was then the Mecca of all ambitious
youth. To the University of Paris his father decided to send him. But
his mother feared the influence of the gay capital, and wished to keep
Bernard by her side. But the boy said, "Virtue has too deep a root in
my heart, mother, for the air of Paris to tarnish it. I will bring
back more of science, but not less of purity." And to Paris he went.
Here he studied law, to please his father, and theology, to please
himself. "As Tobias lived faithful in Nineveh," so the chronicle says,
"thus lived Bernard in Paris." In the midst of snares unnumbered, he
only redoubled his austerities--"_in sanctitate persistens, studiosus
valde_," so the record says.
[Illustration: Monks of the Great Saint Bernard.]
His thoughts ran on the misery of humanity, which he measured by the
abasement to which Christ had submitted in order to effect its
redemption. A great influence in his life came from Germain, his
tutor, a man who had lived the life of a scholar in the world, and who
had at last withdrawn to sanctity and prayer. Although Bernard knew
that his father expected a brilliant future for him, and that he hoped
to effect for him a marriage in some family of the great of those days,
yet he took upon himself the vow of celibacy. "God lives in virgin
souls," he said. There is a record of an argument with Germain, in
which his tutor tries to test the strength of his purpose. Germain
tells him that even in a monastery evil cannot be excluded, and that
many even of the most austere monks live lives of petty jealousy and
ignoble ambition. "There are many," Germain says, "who are saved in
the struggle of the world who would be shipwrecked in a monastery."
But Bernard is steadfast in his choice. "Happy are those who have
chosen to dwell in God's court, and to sleep on His estate." Thus day
and night he struggles against all temptations of worldly glory or
pleasure.
Then his father calls him home; and when he has returned to Annécy,
Bernard finds that every preparation has been made for his approaching
wedding with the daughter of the great Lord of Miolans. "_Sponsa
pulchra_," beautiful bride, this young woman was, according to the
record, and doubtless this was true. The attitude of Bernard toward
this marriage his father and mother could not understand. He held back
constantly, and urged all sorts of objections to its immediate
consummation, but on no ground which seemed to them reasonable. So the
wedding-day was set. The house was full of guests. Every gate and
door of the castle was crowded by armed retainers, and there seemed to
be no escape. Bernard retired to his own room, and in the oldest
manuscripts are given the words of his prayer:
"My adorable Creator, Thou who with thy celestial light enlightened
those who invoke with faith and confidence, and Thou my Jesus, Divine
Redeemer of men and Saviour of souls, lend a favorable ear to my humble
prayer; spread on thy servant the treasures of your infinite mercy. I
know that Thou never abandonest those who place in you their hope;
deliver me, I supplicate Thee, from the snares which the world have
offered me. Break these nets in which the world tries to take me;
permit not that the enemy prevail over thy servant, that adulation may
enfeeble my heart. I abandon myself entirely to Thee. I throw myself
into the arms of thy infinite mercy, hoping that Thou wilt save me, and
wilt reject not my demand."
Then to the good Saint Nicholas:
"Amiable shepherd, faithful guide, holy priest, thou who art my
protector and my refuge, together with God, and His holy mother, the
happy Virgin Mary, obtain me, I pray thee, by thy merits, the grace of
triumph over the obstacles the world opposes to my vow of consecrating
myself to God without reserve--in return for the property, the
pleasures, and honors here below, of which I abandon my part, obtain me
spiritual good all the course of my life, and eternal happiness after
my death."
Then Bernard retired to sleep, and in a dream Saint Nicholas stood
before him and uttered these words:
"Bernard, servant of God the Lord, who never betrays those who put
their confidence in Him, calls thee to follow Him. An immortal crown
is reserved for thee. Leave at once thy father's house and go to
Aosta. There in the cathedral thou shalt meet an old man called
Pièrre. He will welcome thee; thou shalt live with him, and he shall
teach thee the road thou should traverse. For my part, I shall be thy
protector, and will not for an instant abandon thee."
Then Bernard opened his eyes and the vision had disappeared. He was
overcome with joy. His resolution was taken. Though he knew no way
out of the castle, nor from the bedroom in the tower, in which he had
been locked by his thoughtful father, yet he was ready to go.
Taking up a pen, he wrote to his father this letter:
"Very dear parents, rejoice with me that the Lord calls me to His
service. I follow Him to arrive sooner at the port of salvation, the
sole object of my vows. Do not worry about me, nor take the trouble to
seek me. I renounce the marriage, which was ever against my will. I
renounce all that concerns the world. All my desires turn toward
heaven, whither I would arrive. I take the road this minute.
"BERNARD DE MENTHON."
Laying the letter on the table, he soon found himself on the way
outside the castle grounds, and along this path he hurried, over the
mountain passes, toward the city of Aosta. So say the oldest
manuscripts; but in the later stories the details are more fully
described. From these it would appear that Bernard leaped from the
window eighteen or twenty feet, his naked feet striking on a bare rock.
On he ran through the night; on over dark and lonely paths in a country
still uninhabited; over the stony fields and wild watercourses of the
Graian Alps, and when the morning dawned he found himself in the city
of Aosta, a hundred miles from Annécy.
In an old painting the manner of his escape is shown in detail. As he
drops from the window he is supported by Saint Nicholas on the one
side, and an angel on the other, and underneath the painting is the
legend "_Emporté par Miracle_." It is said, too, that in former times
the prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feet
on the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred years
later the good Father Pièrre Verre celebrated mass in the old room in
which Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was both
on the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of the
imprints left by Bernard. One could not then "even be sure that they
were made by hand or foot." But the chronicle wisely says: "Time, in
effacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced the
tradition of the fact among the people of Annécy."
In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord of
Menthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord of
Miolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick,
and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword might
efface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have ended
in a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that "God,
always admirable in His saints," sent as an angel of peace the very
person who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans,
"_sponsa pulchra_" beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquent
bridegroom, whom God had called, she said, to take some nobler part.
When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil in
a neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, she
died, full of days and full of merits. "_Sponsa ipsius_," so the
record says, "_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_"; a bride
who in sanctity and religious days closed her life.
Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's
information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by
Pièrre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and
there, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won the
favor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills," the chronicle
says, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and their
science." "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty,
unselfishness, and hospitality," and to these precepts Bernard was ever
faithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personal
relations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a man
eager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of his
neighbors. He dressed in the plainest garb. He drank from a rude
wooden cup. Wine he never touched, and water but rarely. The juice of
bitter herbs was his beverage, and by every means possible he strove to
reduce his body to servitude. When he came, years later, to his
deathbed, it was his sole regret that it was a _bed_ where he was to
die, instead of the bare boards on which he was wont to sleep.
His fame as a preacher spread far and wide. There are many traditions
of his eloquence, and the memory of his words was fondly cherished
wherever his sweet, rich voice was heard. "From the mountains of Savoy
to Milan and Turin, and even to the Lake of Geneva," says the
chronicle, "his memory was dear." So, in due time, after the death of
Pièrre, Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta.