TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 
159 
the wickedness of their acts; and promises them peace, 
friendship, and other good things, if their husbands prove 
true to their league. And receiving one of the children in 
order to remove all suspicion from their minds, sends them to 
their friends and homes with shouts and other demonstrations 
of great joy. And now night comes on in this vast waste of 
burned mountains ! The little chapel is opened for worship. 
Special “ thanks are returned to God, His most holy mother, 
and Saint Stanislaus for his manifold favors.” 
On examining the camp next morning, it is found “ that 
most of the arrows stick in the pedestal of the cross; whilst 
the cross itself, and tent which serves for a chapel to ‘ our 
lady of Loretto,’ are untouched.” None of the garrison are 
killed ; two only are wounded. These are the brave Tortolero 
and Figueroa ; and they adore the holy cross as the standard 
of their faith; “ they sing Ave Maria to our lady as their 
Captain, and unanimously determine to remain in the country.” 
This garrison is called Loretto. To it, for many years to 
come, will centre the events of the country. Even now it is 
a bright and lone starry point: the only lamp of truth that 
burns, from Cape San Lucas to the north pole, is at Loretto. 
The only civilized men that live on all that extent of coast, 
breathe this first night after the battle, with their hands 
clenched on their guns, in the tents of the garrison at Loretto 
in Lower California! 
On the twenty-third of November a long-boat arrives from 
Senora with Padre Francisco Maria Piccolo—a missionary 
among the Tarahumares, who has left his former field of toil, 
for this new one in California. Padre Salva Tierra has, by 
his arrival, a companion at his prayers, and in his labor among 
these savages. The soldiers now erect some works of defence 
within the camp; the trench is enlarged and fortified with a 
palisade and thorny branches of trees; a chapel is built of 
mortar and stone, with thatched roof, for the image of “ our 
Lady of Lorettothree other structures are raised, one for 
the Padres, one for the Captain, and one for a magazine; and 
