Of his
seventy-four years of life, fifty-four he had been a Franciscan Priest
and thirty-five he had devoted to missionary work, of which nine were
spent in Mexico and fourteen in California. His wonderful eloquence and
magnetic power for preaching which had won him honors in the Old World
even as a newly ordained priest, he had used and adapted for the
instruction of thousands of heathens of the New World; and now that
christianity and civilization were beginning to bud with springtime
loveliness like the Castilian roses he had planted in some of the
mission gardens, while the sun of Spanish glory was still in the
ascendency and no threatening omens of the fall of Spanish or Franciscan
power, or nightmares of the Acts of Secularization disturbed the
cloudless skies, while the Presidio Real of Monterey bore the arms of
the Spanish King and the Capilla Real do San Carlos was thronged with
gallant officers and brave men of the Royal Army and Navy of Castile and
Leon, and Our Lady seemed to smile blessings on her Valley of Carmelo,
before the beauteous dream, nay, realization of noble ambitions, had
vanished like a fair sun, God called His faithful Servant unto Himself,
in his cell at his beloved San Carlos Mission about 2:30 P.
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