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Show PATHFINDERS. Address of Dean Harris Under Auspices of K. of C Early Explorers Exposed to Many Hardships Their Griit and PerseveranceFranciscan Per-severanceFranciscan Missionaries of Great Heart and Steady Purpose-What They Achieved. ; Tohv in the historic City of Quebec, the great est celebration ever witnessed in America is now in the full tide of its glorious success. The ancient an-cient city is commemorating the SOOth anniversary j ,,f its birth. The French and English speaking race? of the earth have sent their distinguished I men to congratulate the Canadians, and -especially ' ! the Canadians of French origin, on the marvelous expansion of the young Dominion. Three hundred hun-dred years ago that daring explorer and courtly ; i cavalier, Samuel Champlain, broke gound and laid J tIio foundations for the most romantic and pic-j pic-j iurosijue city of Xorth America. It is foreign to ; our subject today to follow the intrepid explorer ! in his voyage up the magnificent St. Lawrence, in his campaign against the confederated tribes of tiie Five Nations, in his excursions to the headwaters head-waters of the Ottawa, to Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain. While the great Frenchman was carv-inz carv-inz his way through the wilderness of Xew.Franee, daring and adventurous Spaniard. Don Juan de Onate, was fortifying the City of Santa Fe, the foundations of which he laid three years before fhamplain's bark opened the waters of the St. Lawrrnce. Thus 300 years ago, years before the Fiterim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, Spain and France entered upon the exploration of the p-rst southwest and northwest of the Continent of North America. When studying the history of the explorations of those early times we must not forget that these daring men. priests or soldiers, were traveling entirely en-tirely in the dark. Xothing. in modern times can epproach the romance of the solitary expedition of that fearless missionary. Father Marcos, who in sot out from a Spanish settlement in Culia-can. Culia-can. Mexico, crossed the Mayo and Yaquis rivers, struck the headwaters of the San Pedro of Arizona Ari-zona and. reaching the White Mountains, pushed on to the Hopi and Zuni towns, on the borders of Xr-w Mexico and Arizona. Xot many years ago ' the English and American press and platform were Inud and insistent and rightly so in admiration of the courage and daring initiation of Speke and Burton. Livingstone and Stanley, who let in the lipht on darkest Africa. But it must not be lost cht of. when instituting comparisons between the mm of renown, that the recent explorers of Africa had a satisfactory knowledge of the outlines out-lines of ihe contintnt. knew the names and habits of thf r oast tribes, what rivers entered the ocean and what animals roamed the unexplored ternary. tern-ary. Moreover, all that remained to be examined f' the interior of Africa wasa certain area of town broadfh and length. E;t the first, explorers of America literally h'.-w nothing, absolutely nothing, of the lands tisoy w-re entering. The Spaniards who penetrat-i penetrat-i tho northern wilds of what is now known as "(hr-s,t Basin" had no information on the ex-rTit ex-rTit and vastness of the mainland, and no other raidr- than an astrolabe or a compass. n seconding a mountain they did not know from its summit the South sea might be seen, r a vi-K,n of the ''Great Xorthern Mystery" be v,''ii'di-;ife( them. It was not only an unexplored ar.d they were entering, but a land absolutely unknown un-known and perhaps peopled by races of men and annua!-; unlike anything ever rn or dreamed f. For all they knew they might encounter inter-tiiinablr. inter-tiiinablr. rlrserts of burning sand or rushing rivers f imria-'-alde width. They might roach tne foot-'';1:f foot-'';1:f mountain of unscalable height or lakes or 'urning pith. Thev might chance upon whole rivtrs r,f boiling water, gigantic forests, canyons of I'TTfnt depths, snake-infested marshes or volca-"r volca-"r vomiting fire. They forded rushing streams, ''fended deep canyons, crossed yawning gulfs. Kirir-d narrow ledges and trailed tlie fringes of 'ancerotjc precipices where one false step might farr.v iIkhi headlong to death. A sudden slip, a mo-3ri,tary mo-3ri,tary loss of self-control, a slight giddiness, ir'rn a fall, a hurtling through the rocks, a crash, ;'- ."11 was over. They endured the horrors of ni !,r .t? thirst, of fierce and prolonged desert ,r. and waded ihrough marshes reeking with the 'n.uatif.ns of malarial fever. Their days were r;iv; , f marvels, of appearing and disappearing !!'!(!;. of transcendent possibilities, and the tiiit;-; ;Ul strange people already discovered pro-VnTf pro-VnTf tl;f.,n for t1P wojiderful and the extraordinary. extraordi-nary. It was, as if a passage to the planet Mars Vf i,' ;,,or opened and the first adventurers to the r,:ir tedious would return loaded with gems and Ji-'irn '..j.f; and bearing tidings of marvelous diseov-or;f.; diseov-or;f.; When that heroic Franciscan. Father Mar-j Mar-j ' - izza. entered Arizona and Xew Mexico in ! ,r'. 1"' blazed iho wav for that most remarkable ail explorers. Francis Vasquez de Corotiado, who n,?7inir''ihed the most wonderful exploring expe-T:!nn expe-T:!nn r'Vf r undertaken on the American Continent. -After Coronado had returned to Mexico City, Don ;ntoTno (0 jppp, organized his famous expedi-pave expedi-pave Xew Mexico its name. and. arriving at saw. first of white. men, the astounding al;p da nop." Then, in VM. Juan de Onate led Mo - "iy rom t1lP City of cxi to sptllR 'ew ' aTid Christianize the sedentary tribes of i. ! v"11 rnrnan'c land. Fight years after plant-: plant-: ? us colony he pet out, accompanied by Father 1i I 1 Escobar, for the Zuni and Moqui towns on the Chiquito Colorado. They then explored the Colorado Colo-rado and Gila rivers, following the Colorado to its mouth and claiming the newly discovered regions for the King of Spain. On Januarv 25, 1605, east of tht Conversion of St. Paul, they raised the Cross the emblem of Christianity, at the mouth i j j da and placed Xew Mexico, which then included in-cluded nearly all Arizona, under the protection of St. 1 aul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Returning from his great explorations, Onate built the city of Santa Fe and assigned so far as he could the tribes and the whole extent of the regions he had explored to the care of the Franciscan Fathers. This wonderful missionary order of the Catholic church established missions all over the southwest and in thirty years converted to the faith 0.000 souls, including those of the Moqui and Zuni nations. na-tions. These Spanish Fathers were men of great heart and steady purpose. Every man of them was educated, fitted and trained 'for the pecom-phshment pecom-phshment of one great object, the Christianizing and civilizing of the savage hordes around them. If the recognition of a common bond of humanity human-ity which unites the races of the earth and the units of the race be one of the noblest principles known to mankind; if to establish among men a knowledge of. our common humanity, to remove the barriers which ignorance, prejudice and narrow conceptions of the dignity of life have erected, constitute greatness of soul, then these heroic priests, thirty of whom surrendered their lives for love of their savaw brothers of the desert and the mountain reached the plane of greatness and will be yet immortaliztd in granite or marble. But these brave and saintly men did not limit their time and talents to Christianizing, educating and teaching useful arts and husbandry to their bronzed converts. Many of them opened up unexplored unex-plored regions and cut the trails to unknown lands. Of these was Francisco Garces, who crossed the California desert, covering hundreds of miles without with-out a companion, and relying upon Indians to show him the way he wished or was obliged to go. Of these also wert the Franciscan priests Silvestre Velez de Escalante and Atanasio Dominiguez. who left. Santa Fe July 29, 1776, for the purpose of exploring ex-ploring the land and discovering a direct route to Monterey, in Alta, California. They explored portions of Colorado, entered Utah, and on the 2od of August, first of white men, looked out upon the placid waters of Utah lake. They charted the newly explored land, described de-scribed the tribes thev had visited, the, botany of the country, named the rivers and mountains and bequeathed to us an accurate map of the country as it then was. They did more. On their return to Santa Fe in January vof 1776 they wrote out a history of their expedition which carried them to the Grand Canyon of Arizona and to the Zuni and Hopi villages.. They described Salt Lake, gave the names of the tribes living on its shores, and left to the people of Utah today an invaluable treatise on the habits and manners of the Indians around Utah and Salt lakes. The fete which the Knights- of Columbus art celebrating today and I am "informed intend to make an annual event commemorates the arrival of these adventurous priests at Utah lake 132 years aero. Xow that the religious asperities of other days are disappearing, and religious intolerance fleeing before the enlightenment and education of our country, when men are separating themselves from the heritable of prejudice which made liberality liber-ality of thought and justice to each other an impossibility, im-possibility, we may look hopefully forward to the near future when admiration for daring enterprise and gratitude for heroic discovery will raise a monument in Liberty park to the adventurous and zealous men who first made known to the world the existence of the great inland body of salt water on the continent of America. |