any, Systematic Botany, Physiology, Hygiene, Zoology, Entomology, Geology and Mining, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering.

The university library contains 75,000 volumes. The attendance for the year 1902-03 was 1,483, of which 998 were men, 485 women. The faculty numbers 130 teachers. Tuition is free to California students. Those from other states pay a registration fee of $10 per semester. Of the 1,483 students in 1902-03, 1,171 were from California, representing forty-four counties, 505 being from Santa Clara county. The 312 students from outside of California represented thirty-eight states and territories of the Union and Japan, Canada, England, Mexico, India and Sweden.

CHAPTER XX.

SANTA CLARA College.

By Dennis J. Kavenaugh, S. J.

INTERESTING FACTS CONCERNING THE EARLY MISSIONARY EDUCATORS AND THE GREAT COLLEGE OF SANTA CLARA-THE EARLY MEXICAN POLICY -ROMANCE OF THE OLD DAYS-SOME ILLUSTRIOUS GRADUATES OF THE OLD SCHOOL-HEROIC AMBITION OF THE FOUNDERS-HOW SKILLFUL TEACHERS DIRECT THEIR CHARGES IN A PICTURESQUE LoCATION-FACTS ABOUT THE PASSION PLAY AS PRODUCED BY STUDENTS -THE SURROUNDINGS A PALM GARDEN AND OLIVE TREES-FACTS ABOUT THE BUILDINGS.

From the day when, for purposes best known to itself, the Mexican government secularized the Franciscan missions of California, the historian must trace the gradual decay and final collapse of some of those glorious monuments, the primitive adobe buildings, which marked the path of Christian conquest and dawn of civilization in the rugged wilds of the west. With the secularization came greed, in many cases cruel greed, and the work of the Padres came to a dead halt. Their buildings scattered through Serraland began to crumble in the dust and had not the more tolerant spirit of Americanism been wafted to these shores in the early fifties, there would be nothing now, but heaps of adobe mingling with fragments of red tile, to tell the story of self-sacrifice and devotion to noble enterprises with which California was subdued. Had the work of secularization been unimpeded, the future of all the missions would have been the same; razed to the ground, they would have presented but a chaotic heap of debris, or if an occasional arch stood out from the ruins, it might have served for an artist's sketch, but beyond that it would have been lost to historic research.

But American tolerance made it possible to preserve some of those primitive structures, and zeal, similar to that of the early Franciscans, preserved them. Such at least was the case with Mission Santa Clara, founded in 1777 by Fathers Junipero Serra, Murguia and de la Pena, and taken in

charge by the Jesuit priest, John Nobili, in March, 1851, as the first American college of the west. By diligent repairing the mission building was preserved and stands today, in great part, as it stood well-nigh one hundred years ago, as a trophy snatched from the devastating influence of irreligion and neglect. Well-nigh one hundred years ago, we say, because the present building was not begun until 1818, after a severe earthquake had weakened the former church and cloister, built in 1781, and had made further use somewhat hazardous.

What now remains was fortunately exempt until 1836 from Mexican control; for though it was in 1828 that the congress passed their act of liberating the Indians,-that is of liberating them from Mexican influence, a rather doubtful form of liberation as was subsequently made evident,-it was not until 1836 that the scheme was carried into effect at Santa Clara. As elsewhere the flourishing community of Christian Indians died away, the fields were neglected, and the buildings, exposed to the corroding influences of the weather, had taken on a somewhat tottering aspect. Some time during the period of devastation, William Cullen Bryant passed through Santa Clara and he has given us in his book, "What I Saw in California," a pretty faithful picture of the havoc caused by Mexican rule.

“The rich lands surrounding the Mission of Santa Clara," he writes, “are entirely neglected. I did not notice a foot of ground under cultivation except the garden enclosed, which contained a variety of fruits and plants. of the temperate and tropical climate. From want of care these are fast decaying. The picture of decay and ruin presented by this once flourishing establishment, surrounded by a country so fertile and scenery so enchanting is a melancholy spectacle to the passing traveler and speaks a language of loud condemnation against the government."

Such, then, is the history, in brief, of the buildings which in 1851 were converted into Santa Clara College. For several years previous to the actual beginning of education on the coast, attempts had been made to secure some Jesuits from the Rocky Mountains where the sons of Loyola had some very flourishing missions among the native tribes. Accordingly in 1849 Fathers Accolti and Nobili left their missions in Oregon to comply with the request of Father J. M. de F. Gonzalez, who was anxious to have some co-workers in this part of the vineyard. The treaty of 1848 had already confirmed

American possession of California and so the two Jesuits were but changing their field of labor, not the conditions of living. Reaching San Jose, the then capital of the state, they were given charge of the Pueblo church, where they worked together until in the middle of 1850, Father Accolti, recalled to the northwest, left his companion alone in a strange land, surrounded by the rough and uncouth elements of border life. There was now no hope of establishing a college and, as we would be inclined to judge from our present position, no demand and no possibility of profit.

When there was question, about the same time, some fifty years ago, of establishing a university in Ireland, people were heard to say on all sides (so we are told by Cardinal Newman) "Impossible! How can you give degrees? What will your degrees be worth? Where are your endowments? Where are your edifices? Where will you find students? What will the government have to say to you? Who will acknowledge you?" These, and similar questions must have occurred to the solitary Jesuit who in 1851 was commissioned by the Most Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, archbishop of San Francisco, to open a college at Santa Clara. But that he answered them successfully and to his own satisfaction, we may judge from the fact that, having been commissioned by his superior, he set out for Santa Clara at once and took possession of the old mission buildings. It was on March 19th that the college was declared ready to receive students and that twelve youngsters enrolled their names on the register of California's first institution of learning. Father Nobili began his work with a capital of one hundred and fifty dollars, with two assistant professors, an Indian cook and a woman servant. The four last named were to receive salaries and though one month would almost exhaust the treasury, the pioneer educator went on with his work nothing daunted.

The history of the primitive days is romantic. The college buildings were, as we have seen, in a tumble-down condition; the adobe walls were cracked; the tiles of the roof shattered and loose, so loose in fact, that the rain poured freely into the rooms, making life therein at once miserable and unwholesome. We cannot imagine the difficulties that had to be surmounted, but if we had seen the first president of Santa Clara, himself a graduate of the Roman College and a brilliant physicist, mathematician and litterateur, going from class-room to class-room and then, when the day's

work of teaching was over, supervising and taking personal part in the work of reconstruction and general cleaning, we would readily admit that the college was in truth begun under difficult circumstances. Under Father Nobili's direction the roofs were patched, the walls strengthened and the entire cloister given a general living aspect after the slumber of fifteen years.

Such devotedness could not but win esteem for the man and respect for an institution which in all other regards was extremely despicable. As a matter of fact it did attract the attention of the then inhabitants of California, so that at the close of the first scholastic year, the college register contained as many as forty-five names.

It

of the

will be of historic interest to give these names here inasmuch as some families represented and the young men themselves are well known

in the pioneer and subsequent history of the state.

With such a goodly number the first year of Santa Clara came to a dose contrary to the adverse predictions of some few wiseacres. It was some time in February that the perpetuity of the good work was feared for.