lows:--the commander himself;
a lieutenant in charge of a company of soldiers; a missionary; the
captain, pilot and surgeon; twenty-five soldiers; the officers and crew
of the ship, twenty-five in all; the baker, the cook and two assistants;
and two blacksmiths: total, sixty-two souls. An inventory shows that the
vessel was provisioned for eight months.
The San Carlos left La Paz on the 9th of January; the San Antonio on the
15th of February; the San Joseph on the 16th of June. All the vessels
met with heavy storms, and the San Carlos, being driven sadly out of her
route, did not reach San Diego till twenty days after the San Antonio,
though dispatched some five weeks earlier. We shudder to read that of
her crew but one sailor and the cook were left alive; the rest, along
with many of the soldiers, having succumbed to the scurvy. The San
Antonio also lost eight of her crew from the same dreadful disease.
These little details serve better than any general description to give
us an idea of the horrible conditions of Spanish seamanship in the
middle of the eighteenth century. As for the San Joseph, she never
reached her destination at all, though where and how she met her fate
remains one of the dark mysteries of the ocean. Two small points in
connection with her loss are perhaps sufficiently curious to merit
notice. In the first place, she was the only one of the ships that had
no missionary on board; and secondly, she was called after the very
saint who had been named special patron of the entire undertaking.
The original plan, as we have seen, had been that Father Junipero should
accompany the governor in the second division of the land-expedition;
but this, when the day fixed for departure came, was found to be quite
impossible owing to the ulcerous sore on his leg, which had been much
aggravated by the exertions of his recent hurried journey from Loreto to
La Paz and back. Greatly chafing under the delay, he was none the less
obliged to postpone his start for several weeks. At length, on the 28th
of March, in company with two soldiers and a servant, he mounted his
mule and set out. The event showed that he had been guilty of undue
haste, for he suffered terribly on the rough way, and on reaching
San Xavier, whither he went to turn over the management of the Lower
California missions to Palou, who was then settled there, his condition
was such that his friend implored him to remain behind, and allow him
(Palou) to g
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