HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



21 



a knowledge of the geography, natural history and 

 languages of the peninsula, and they appears to have 

 been generally successful. The result of their re 

 searches were published in Madrid, in 1757, and the 

 work was entitled a " History of California." They 

 surveyed the whole coast of the Gulf of California, 

 and, in 1709, Father Kuhn, one of the Jesuit fathers, 

 ascertained beyond doubt the connection of the penin 

 sula with the continent, which had been denied for a 

 century. But all the labors of the Jesuits were brought 

 to an end in 1767. In that year, Charles III. of 

 Spain, issued a decree, banishing members of that 

 order from the Spanish territories ; and a strong 

 military force, under command of Don Gasper de 

 Portola, was despatched to California, and soon put 

 an end to the rule of the Jesuits by tearing them from 

 their converts. 



The Spanish government did not intend to abandon 

 California. The peninsula immediately became a 

 province of Mexico, and was provided with a civil and 

 military government, subordinate to the viceroy of 

 that country. The mission fell under the rule of the 

 Dominicans, and from their mode of treatment, most 

 of the converts soon returned to their former state of 

 barbarism. The Spaniards soon formed establishments 

 on the western side of the peninsula. In the spring 

 of 1769, a number of settlers, with some soldiers and 

 Franciscan friars, marched through the peninsula to 

 wards San Diego. They reached the bay of San Diego 

 after a toilsome journey, and the settlement on the 

 shore of the bay was begun in the middle of May, 

 1769. An attempt was made, soon after, to establish 

 a colony at Port Monterey ; but the party under 

 Portola that went in search of the place, passed further 



