96 WESTERN SERIES OF READERS. 



priest holds services within its aged walls once 

 a year. 



Beneath its floor rest the bones of Junipero 

 Serra and his associates, who spent their lives in 

 an earnest endeavor to bring the gospel to the 

 degraded heathen on the west coast of America. 

 But how changed is the scene now, and how 

 rapidly has the surrounding countr}^ passed from 

 the Indians to the Spaniards, and from the Span- 

 iards to the Americans. 



But out on Cypress Point there are still grow- 

 ing the same trees beneath which the Indians 

 camped centuries ago, and under whose branches 

 the reverend monks bore the bell and the crucifix 

 as they started out on their journey northward to 

 establish a new mission church. 



Venerable old trees are these, which have with- 

 stood the buffetings of the west winds for scores 

 and hundreds of years. Their trunks are gnarled 

 and twisted and severe, but their tops are ever- 

 green, though beaten by the ocean storms into 

 fioorlike flatness. 



Some of them stand erect, boldly peering out 

 over the horizon, as if anxious to catch a glimpse 

 of some friendly ship coming in from the far 

 west; others crouch like sleeping lions, or bring 

 their green covering down to the very ground, 

 like the wall of a tent. 



