Her galleons from the Philippines found it a long, weary, tedious and disease-provoking voyage around the coast of South America to Spain, and besides, too many hostile and piratical vessels roamed over the Pacific Sea to allow Spanish captains to sleep easy o' nights.

Hence it was decided that if ports of call were established on the California coast, fresh meats and vegetables and pure water could be supplied to the galleons, and in addition, with _presidios_ to defend them, they might escape the plundering pirates by whom they were beset.

Accordingly plans were being formulated for the colonization and missionization of California when, by authority of his own sweet will, ruling a people who fully believed in the divine right of kings to do as they pleased, King Carlos the Third issued the proclamation already referred to, totally and completely banishing the Jesuits from all parts of his dominions, under penalty of imprisonment and death.
I doubt whether many people of to-day, even though they be of the Catholic Church, can realize what obedience to that order meant to these devoted priests.

Naturally they must obey it--monstrous though it was--but the one thought that tore their hearts with anguish was: Who would care for their Indian charges?
For these ignorant and benighted savages they had left their homes and given up all that life ordinarily means and offers.

Were they to be allowed to drift back into their dark heathendom?
No! In spite of his cruelty to the Jesuits, the king had provided that the Indians should not be neglected.