Volume 20 — The Log Chapel On The Rappahannock.

Erected A.D. 1570—The First Christian Shrine In The Old Dominion.

Virginia is proud of her antiquity. She assumes the title of Old Dominion; she was long styled the Mother of Presidents. But really her antiquity is greater than many know. Before the English settlers landed on the shores of the James, Stephen Gomez and other Spanish navigators had entered the waters of the Chesapeake and consecrated that noble sheet of water to the Virgin daughter of David's line, as the Bay of St. Mary, or the Bay of the Mother of God.

The soldier of the cross followed hard on the steps of the explorer. As early as in 1536 St. Mary's Bay is laid down on Spanish maps. Oviedo mentions it in 1537, and from that time pilots ranged the coast, David Glavid, an Irishman, being recorded as one who knew it best. All agree as to its latitude, its two capes, the direction of the bay, and the rivers entering into it, identifying beyond all peradventure our modern Chesapeake with the St. Mary's Bay of the early Spanish explorers. Though his attention was called to it, the latest historian of Virginia, misled by a somewhat careless guide, robs his State of the glory which we claim for her. The sons of S. Dominic first planted the cross on the shores of the Chesapeake, and bore away to civilized shores the brother of the chief of Axacan or Jacan, a district not far from the Potomac. Reaching Mexico, this chief attracted the notice of Don Luis de Velasco, the just, upright, disinterested Viceroy of New Spain—one of those model rulers who, amid a population spurred on by a fierce craving for wealth, never bent the knee to Mammon, but lived so poor that he died actually in debt. This good man had the Virginian chief instructed in the Christian faith, and, when his dispositions seemed to justify the belief in his sincerity and faith, the chieftain of the Rappahannock was baptized, amid all the pomp and splendor [pg 848] of Mexico, in the cathedral of that city, the viceroy being his god-father, and bestowing upon him his own name, Don Luis de Velasco, by which the Virginia chief is always styled in Spanish annals.

Meanwhile, Coligny's French Huguenots attempted to settle Florida, but their colony, which was doomed to early extinction from its very material and utter want of religious organization or any tie but a mere spirit of adventure, was crushed with ruthless cruelty by Pedro Melendez, a brave but stern Spanish navigator and warrior, in whose eyes every Frenchman on the sea was a pirate. Soon after accomplishing his bloody work, which left Spain in full possession of the southern Atlantic coast, Melendez, who had sent out vessels to explore the coast, began his preparations for occupying St. Mary's Bay. The form of the northern continent was not then known; much indeed of the eastern coast had been explored, but so little was the line of the western coast understood that on maps and globes the Pacific was shown as running nearly into the Atlantic coast, as may be seen in a curious copper globe possessed by the New York Historical Society, but which once belonged to Pope Marcellus II. Believing that the Chesapeake, by the rivers running into it, would easily lead to the western ocean, Melendez spent the winter of 1565 studying out the subject with the aid of Don Luis de Velasco and Father Urdaneta, a missionary just arrived from China by the overland route across Mexico. Combining all the information, he was led to believe that, by ascending for eighty leagues a river flowing into the bay, it was necessary only to cross a mountain range to find two arms of the sea, one leading to the French at Newfoundland, the other to the Pacific. To many this will seem wild; but it is evident that Don Luis referred to the great trail leading from the Huron country through the territory of the Five Nations to the land of the Andastes on the Susquehanna, by which the last-named tribe sold furs on the upper lakes, which went down to the French at Brest on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the upper lakes were the arm of the sea stretching westward, as was supposed, to China. An adventurous Frenchman, Stephen Brulé, some few years later followed this trail from the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna. Melendez, however, misinterpreted it. To his mind the upper waters of the Chesapeake, the Potomac and Susquehanna, then known as the Espiritu Santo and Salado, were to be the great carrying place of eastern trade.

Anxious to secure for his own country so important a pass, Melendez, in 1566, despatched to St. Mary's Bay a vessel bearing thirty soldiers and two Dominican Fathers to begin a station in Axacan or Jacan, near the Chesapeake. These pioneers of the faith were escorted or guided by Don Luis de Velasco. Of these missionaries we seek in vain the names. Perhaps their fellow-religious now laboring on the banks of the Potomac will be stimulated to trace up these early labors of the sons of S. Dominic; though we must admit that Spanish chronicles do not speak of them with praise. In fact, they assert that these missionaries, corrupted by an easy life in Peru, had no taste for a laborious mission in Virginia, though perhaps they learned the real state of affairs in that land, and, taught by Father Cancer's fate, felt that the attempt would be fatal [pg 849] to all. Certain it is that the whole party took alarm. They forced the captain to weigh anchor, and, leaving the capes on either hand, steer straight to Spain. The Dominican missions in Spanish Florida, which began with the glorious epic of Father Cancer's devoted heroism, closed with this feeble effort to plant the Gospel on the shores of the Chesapeake; yet they, too, like the earlier discoverers, undoubtedly consecrated to Mary and the Rosary the land which in its names, Virginia and Maryland, yet recalls the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the bay was first consecrated.

Four years later saw Melendez himself in Spain, full of his projects, and bent on carrying them out. The sons of S. Ignatius Loyola, full of the early vigor of their institute, were in Florida. The new mission, begun in 1566, had already a martyr in Father Peter Martinez, of Celda, in the Diocese of Saragossa, who was shipwrecked on the coast, and put to death by the Indians not far from St. Augustine. It had its devoted laborers in Father John Rogel, of Pamplona, Father Sedeño, and Brother Villareal, who sought to win to Christ the Indians near St. Augustine and Port Royal, and who had established an Indian school at Havana to help the great work, Brother Baez being the first to compile a grammar. To extend these missions as far as the Chesapeake was a subject which Melendez laid before S. Francis Borgia, then recently made general of the order, after having acted as commissary of the Spanish missions. A letter of S. Pius V. encouraged Melendez, and with the co-operation of these two saints the projected mission to the Chesapeake took form at last. Perhaps some of the clergy in Maryland and Virginia remember the personal interest of these saints in the field where they are now laboring; but we fear that the fact has been forgotten. Let us trust that more than one church of S. Pius V. will be monuments of his interest in the land where the next pope that bore his name established the first episcopal see on the coast—that of Baltimore—and religion has taken such gigantic steps under the fostering care of Popes Pius VII. and Pius IX.

When the founder of Florida was thus earnestly engaged in Spain in promoting the spiritual welfare of the colony, Don Luis de Velasco, the Virginian chief, was still beyond the Atlantic, a grave, intelligent man of fifty, well versed in Spanish affairs, to all appearance a sincere and correct Christian and a friend of the Spaniards. With every mark of joy he offered to return to his native land of Axacan, and there do all in his power to further the labors of the missionaries who should be sent to instruct his brother's tribe. So powerful a coadjutor was welcomed by all, and ere long Don Luis stood on the deck of a staunch Spanish ship, with a band of Jesuits destined to reinforce those already laboring on the Florida mission. This pious party consisted of Father Luis de Quiros, a native of Xerez de la Frontera, in Andalusia, with Brothers Gabriel Gomez, of Granada, and Sancho de Zevallos, of Medina de Rio Seco, all selected for the great work by S. Francis Borgia himself. In November the vessel anchored before the Spanish fort Santa Elena, which stood on the island of South Carolina's famous Port Royal, that still bears the name of the sainted mother of Constantine.

The Jesuit mission of Florida had been erected into a vice-province [pg 850] under Father John Baptist Segura. This estimable religious was a native of Toledo, who had, while pursuing his theological course of study, entered the Society of Jesus at Alcalà on the 9th of April, 1566. S. Francis, who knew him well, entertained the highest esteem for Segura's virtues and personal merit, and took him from the rectorship of the College of Vallisoleta in 1568 to assume the direction of the vice-province of Florida. For two years had he labored with sad discouragement in the forbidding field among the Floridian tribes, cheered by letters of his superiors rather than by any hope of success that as yet seemed to dawn on his exertions.

He was at Santa Elena when Father Quiros arrived, bearing the instructions for the establishment of the new mission on the shores of the Chesapeake.

That missionary had become discouraged and disheartened. All his labors and those of his associate missionaries among the Calos Indians, on the southern coast of Florida, had proved utterly unavailing. No impression could be made on the flinty hearts of those treacherous and cruel tribes, which, indeed, to the end resisted the calls of divine grace. The labors of the Jesuit missionaries on the coast of South Carolina were scarcely more encouraging. The attempts to civilize and convert found hearers only as long as food and presents were given.

Father Segura resolved for a time to abandon the unpromising field, and turn all their energies to an Indian school at Havana, where children from the Florida tribes could be carefully instructed, so as to form a nucleus for future Christian bands in their native tribes. But the voice of S. Francis recalled him to sterner labors, and he resolved to go in person to the new field opened to them in Axacan, where the influence of Don Luis and the character of the tribes seemed to promise more consoling results. He accordingly directed the experienced Father Rogel to remain at Santa Elena in charge of the missions there, and selected eight associates for his new mission. These were Father Luis de Quiros, Brothers Gabriel Gomez and Sancho Zevallos, already mentioned, with Brother Peter de Linares and John Baptist Mendez, Christopher Redondo, and Gabriel de Solis, who with Alphonsus, destined to be the sole survivor, seem to have been four Indian boys from their school at Havana, and regarded as novices, trained already to mission work as catechists. Such was the missionary party that was to plant the cross in Axacan and open the way for Christianity to China by a new route.

With the influence and support of Don Luis they would need no Spanish aid; and as experience had shown them that soldiers were sometimes a detriment to the mission they were intended to protect, these devoted missionaries determined to trust themselves entirely, alone and unprotected, in the hands of the Indians.

On his side Don Luis made every promise as to the security of the persons of the missionaries confided to his care by the adelantado of Florida. “They shall lack nothing,” he declared. “I will always be at hand to aid them.”

On the 5th of August, 1570, this little mission colony sailed from Santa Elena, and in that enervating heat must have crept slowly enough along the coast and up the Chesapeake; [pg 851] for it was not till the 10th of September that they reached the country of Don Luis, which is styled in Spanish accounts Axacan or Jacan.

Where was the spot termed “La Madre de Dios de Jacan”?—Our Lady of Axacan (or, as we should write it, Ahacan or Hacan). Precisely where no map or document has yet been found to show. It was evidently near the Susquehanna (Salado) or the Potomac (Espiritu Santo), the two rivers at the head of the bay known to Melendez, and by which he hoped to reach China. That it could not have been the Susquehanna seems clear from the fact that, being to the eastward, it would not naturally be the shortest route; and, moreover, that river was in those days, and till far in the ensuing century, held by a warlike tribe of Huron origin, living in palisaded towns, while the tribe of Don Luis, who dwelt at Axacan, were evidently nomads of the Algonquin race.

We are therefore led to look for it on the Potomac, the Espiritu Santo of the early Spanish navigators. The vessel that bore the devoted Vice-Provincial Father Segura and two other Spanish vessels some time afterwards ascended this river for a considerable distance to a point whence they proceeded to the country of Don Luis, which, as letters show, lay on a river six miles off, and which they might have reached directly by ascending that river, though it was always passed by the pilots, being regarded, apparently, as less navigable and safe. The Rappahannock at once suggests itself as answering the conditions required to explain the Spanish accounts.

On the Potomac there is to this day a spot called Occoquan, which is near enough to the Spanish Axacan to raise a suspicion of their identity. Not far below it the Potomac and Rappahannock, in their sinuous windings, approach so closely as to increase the resemblance to the country described.

The land that met the eyes of the missionary pioneers in the wilderness of Virginia was not one to raise fond hopes or sustain delusions. A long sterility had visited Florida and extended even to the Chesapeake. Its effects were even more striking. Of all that the descriptions of Don Luis had prepared them to find in Axacan there was absolutely nothing to be seen. Just come from Florida and its vicinity, with its rich, luxuriant vegetation, with fruits of spontaneous growth, they beheld a less favored land, bare and parched with a six years' sterility, with the starving remnants of decimated and thrice decimated tribes. The wretched inhabitants looked upon Don Luis, their countryman, as if sent from heaven, and, seeing him treated with honor, they received the Spaniards with every demonstration of goodwill, though they were so destitute that they could not offer the newcomers any fruit or maize.

With the winter fast approaching, it seemed almost madness for Father Segura and his companions to attempt to establish themselves in this unpromising land; but the previous failure of the Dominican Fathers, the almost chiding words of S. Francis Borgia, and the deep interest manifested by Melendez in the success of the attempt, apparently decided the question against all ideas of expediency or mere worldly prudence.

The researches of the late Buckingham Smith in the Spanish archives not only brought to light many [pg 852] points tending to fix the position of Axacan, but were also rewarded by finding two letters written at this point by these early apostles of Virginia. The father provincial wrote to the king; his associate, Father Quiros, addressed his letters to Melendez, and Father Segura added a few words, urging prompt relief. These last have fortunately thus reached us. Father Quiros wrote: “Seeing, then, the good-will which this people displayed—although, on the other hand, as I said, they are so famished that all expected to perish of hunger and cold this winter, as many did in preceding winters, because it is very hard for them to find the roots on which they usually sustain themselves—the great snows which fall in this land preventing their search—seeing also the great hope there is of the conversion of this people and the service of our Lord and his Majesty, and a way to the mountains and China, etc., it seemed to the Provincial Father Segura that we should venture to remain with so few ship-stores and provisions, though we ate on the way two of the four barrels of biscuit and the little flour they gave us for the voyage.”

They resolved to stay, seeing no danger except that of famine; for they urged speedy relief. “It is very necessary that you should endeavor, if possible, to supply us with all despatch; and if it be impossible to do so in winter, at least it is necessary that in March, or, at the furthest, early in April, a good supply be sent, so as to give all these people wherewith to plant.”

The pilot of the vessel, short of provisions from the time lost on reaching Axacan, put the missionaries hastily ashore on the 11th of September, and the next day sailed, “leaving us in this depopulated land with the discomforts already described,” say the missionaries.

It was arranged between the missionaries and this pilot that, about the time of his expected return, they would have Indians on the lookout, apparently at the mouth of the river, who were to build signal-fires to attract attention. On seeing these beacons he was to give them a letter for the missionaries.

The little band of Christians beheld the vessel hoist her sail and glide down the river. They stood alone in a wild land, far from aid and sympathy. Two priests, three religious, Don Luis, and four other Indian converts, formed the little Christendom. But their destination was not yet reached. Guided by Don Luis, they took up their march for the river six miles off, Indians bearing some of their scanty supplies, the missionaries themselves carrying their chapel service, books, and other necessaries. After this portage they embarked on the river—which they might have ascended, and which seems evidently the Rappahannock—and thus penetrated some two leagues or more further into the country to the villages of the tribe.

Yet, even before they left the banks of the Potomac they were called upon to commence their ministry. “The cacique, brother of Don Luis, having,” says Father Quiros, “a son three years old very sick, who was seven or eight leagues from here, as it seemed to him to be on the point of death, he was instant that we should go to baptize it; wherefore it occurred to the vice-principal to send one of us by night to baptize it, as it was very near death.”

The Indians on the Rappahannock did not dwell in palisaded towns, like the Conestogas on the [pg 853] Susquehanna, and their kindred, the Five Nations, in New York. From the Spanish accounts they dwelt in scattered bands, each forming a little hamlet of a few cabins, each house in the midst of its rude garden; for they cultivated little ground, depending on the spontaneous productions of the earth: acorns, nuts, berries, and roots. Such were they when Smith described them thirty years later, when Powhatan, residing on the James, ruled over the scattered bands as far as the Rappahannock. It was evidently among that tribe, so well known to us by Smith's descriptions, that Father Segura and his companions began their labors, and Powhatan may well have been a son of the cacique, brother of Don Luis.

The accounts of the subsequent proceedings of the little mission colony are derived from Alphonsus, one of the Indian boys, and are somewhat obscure. They make the journey to the hamlets of the tribe a weary one through wood and desert and marsh, loaded with their baggage, and living on roots, and not the short journey which Father Quiros anticipated. His letter stated that the Indian canoes were all broken; it was probably found impossible to attempt to repair them, and the whole party trudged on by the riverside to their destination.

The hamlet first reached was a wretched one, tenanted only by gaunt and naked savages, who bore the famine imprinted on their whole forms. Here amid the tent-like lodges of the Indians, made of poles bound together and covered with mats and bark, Father Segura and his companions erected a rude house of logs, the first white habitation in that part of America—first church of the living God, first dwelling-place of civilized men; for one end was devoted to their chapel, while the other was their simple dwelling. Here doubtless, before the close of September, 1570, the little community recited their Office together, and, under the tuition of Don Luis, began to study the language. Here, at this modest altar, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered by the two priests. Nowhere on the continent to the northward were the sacred rites then heard, unless, indeed, at Brest, in Canada. Greenland, with its bishop and clergy and convents, was a thing of the past; Cartier's colony, on the St. Lawrence, had been abandoned. The Chapel of the Mother of God, at Jacan, was the church of the frontier, the outpost of the faith.

As Father Segura had foreseen that he must winter there, and might not receive any supplies before March or April, he doubtless began, like his Indian neighbors, to lay up a store of provisions for the long winter. Acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, and chinquapins were regularly gathered by the natives, as well as persimmons and a root like a potato, growing in the swampy lands. Game must have been scarce on that narrow peninsula between two rivers, and they had no means of hunting. Though the rivers of Virginia teemed with fish, we find no indication that the missionaries were supplied with means of deriving any food from that source.

For a time Don Luis remained with them, showing all deference and respect to Father Segura. In his letter to Melendez Father Quiros gives the impression he had made upon them up to that time, and from which it is evident that they had no suspicion of his treachery. “Don Luis,” says he, “acts [pg 854] well, as was expected of him, and is very obedient to all that the father enjoins on him, with much respect as well for the provincial as for the rest of us that are here, and he commends himself earnestly to your worship, to all his other friends and masters.”

This good disposition may have been sincere at first, but, as too often happens in such cases, old habits returned; he became Indian with the Indians, rather than Spanish with the Spaniards. Ere long he abandoned the missionaries altogether, and went off to another hamlet, distant from it a day's journey and a half.

The mission party were not yet sufficiently versed in the language to dispense with the aid of Don Luis as interpreter, and his influence was constantly needed among the lawless natives. Feeling this, Father Segura several times sent one of the young men to urge Don Luis to return, but he put them off constantly with false statements or unmeaning promises. In this way the winter wore away, with gloomy forebodings in the hearts of the pioneer priests in the log chapel on the Rappahannock. The only hope that cheered and sustained them was that the ship would speedily return from Santa Elena with the supplies they needed for themselves and the seed-corn for the natives, whom they hoped to persuade to cultivate more, and depend less on the precarious means of sustenance. Meanwhile, as January, 1571, was drawing to a close, Father Segura resolved to make a last effort to move the heart of the recreant Don Luis. He sent Father Quiros, with Brothers de Solis and Mendez, to the hamlet where he resided, to make a last appeal. The priest, who had so long known him, endeavored to recall him to higher and better feelings. The unhappy man made many excuses for his absence, and continued to beguile the missionary with promises; but his heart was given up to deadly malice. He had renounced Christianity, and doomed its envoys to death. As Father Quiros and his two companions turned sadly away to depart from the place and rejoin their suffering companions, a shower of arrows whizzed through the air. Quiros and his companions fell, pierced by the sharp flinty arrows of the apostate and his followers. Virginia had its first martyrs of Christ. Their bodies were at once stripped and subjected to all the mutilations that savage fancy inspired.

Father Segura, with the three brothers and two other Indian youths, had spent the interval in prayer, anxiety deepening as no sign of Father Quiros appeared. On the fourth day the yells and cries that were borne on the chilly air announced the approach of a large party, and in a short time Don Luis appeared, arrayed in the cassock of Father Quiros, attended by his brother, the cacique, and a war party armed with clubs and bows. He sternly demanded from the missionaries their knives and axes used for chopping wood, knowing that with them alone could they make any defence. These were surrendered without remonstrance. Father Segura saw that the end was come. The long-delayed ship would be too late. He prepared his companions to die. They doubtless gathered around the altar where the Holy Sacrifice had just been offered. Then the apostate gave a signal, and his warriors rushed upon the defenceless and unresisting mission party, and slaughtered [pg 855] all but Alphonsus, who was protected by a brother of Don Luis, more humane than that fallen man.

The bodies of his victims, Father Segura, Brothers Gomez, Linares, and Zevallos, and the Indian novice, Christopher Redondo, were then, we are told, buried beneath their chapel-house. The shrine of the Mother of God was doubtless pillaged, perhaps demolished; the lamp of Christian light was extinguished, and pagan darkness again prevailed in the land.

As nearly as could be ascertained, the martyrdom of Father Quiros occurred on Sunday, the 4th of February, 1571; that of Father Segura a few days later.

Why had their countrymen in Florida so cruelly neglected them, in spite of the urgent letters taken back by the pilot? It was probably because, Melendez being absent, the letters were sent to Spain, and the pilot did not fully reveal the destitute condition in which he had left the mission colony. Brother Vincent Gonzalez was urgent to bear relief to the vice-provincial, but he was put off with the pretext that no pilot could be found to run along the coast from Port Royal to the Chesapeake. It was not till spring that the good brother succeeded in getting a vessel and some Spaniards to proceed to the relief of his superior, as to whose welfare great anxiety was now felt. They ran up the Potomac, and reached the spot where Segura had landed. Indian runners had descried the vessel when it entered the river, and, when the Spanish craft came to anchor, Indians were there to meet them, and the garb of the missionaries was seen in the distance. But the treacherous red men failed to lure them ashore with this device, although some came forward, crying, “See the fathers who came to us. We have treated them well; come and see them, and we will treat you likewise.”

On the contrary, suspecting treachery from the fact that the pretended fathers did not hasten down to meet them, the Spaniards not only avoided landing, but, seizing two of the treacherous natives, sailed back to Port Royal.

Melendez, soon after returning from Spain, heard their report, and with characteristic energy resolved to punish the crime. Taking a small but staunch and fleet vessel, with a sufficient force, he sailed in person to the Chesapeake in 1572, bearing with him Father Rogel and Brother Villareal. He evidently ran up the Potomac, as the other vessel had done, to the spot already familiar to the pilots. Here he landed the Spanish soldiers, and unfurled the standard of Spain on the soil of Virginia. Marching inland, this determined man soon captured several Indians. They were interrogated, and at once confessed that the whole mission party had been cruelly murdered, but they laid the blame of the terrible crime on the apostate Don Luis. Apparently, by one of them Melendez sent word to the tribe that he would not harm the innocent, but he insisted on their delivering up Don Luis. But that false Christian, on seeing the Spanish vessel, fled with his brother, the cacique, and all attempts to arrest them failed. The brother who had saved the Indian boy Alphonsus, however, came forward to meet Melendez, bringing to him the only survivor of Father Segura's pious band. The adelantado received him with every mark of pleasure.

From this boy was obtained a detailed account of all that had [pg 856] happened after the departure of the vessel which left the missionaries on the bank of the Potomac. The statement is, of course, the basis of all the accounts we possess of the fate of the log chapel on the Rappahannock and the little Jesuit community gathered to serve it.

The Spanish commander arrested a number of Indians; and when Alphonsus had pointed out those concerned in the tragedy, Melendez hung eight of them at the yard-arm of his vessel. Father Rogel prepared them all for death, instructing them, we presume, by the aid of the young survivor, and had the consolation of baptizing them.

After this summary act of retributive justice, the founder of St. Augustine, with his mail-clad force, embarked, and the Spanish flag floated for the last time over the land of Axacan.

Father Rogel was loath to leave the country without bearing with him the precious remains of his martyred brethren; but Melendez could not venture so far from his ship, and his force was too small to divide. The Jesuit Father could bear away, as a relic, only a crucifix which had been in the log chapel. Divine vengeance is said to have overtaken those who profaned the sacred vessels, and especially an attempt to injure this crucifix; first one, then two others, having been struck dead. It was subsequently placed by Father Rogel in the College of Guayala.

Some thirty-five years later an English colony entered a river, to which they gave the name of Mary Stuart's son. The Indians from that river to the Rappahannock were ruled by Powhatan; and it is worthy of remark that Raphe Hamor, one of the earliest settlers, states that Powhatan's tribe were driven from their original abode by the Spaniards. They were Algonquins, and did not come from Florida. They were, in all probability, the very tribe among whom Father Segura laid down his life. Powhatan, represented as then a man of sixty, might, at twenty-five, have witnessed or taken part in the martyrdom.

Such is the history of the first community of the Society of Jesus in the Old Dominion, of which they were the first white occupants. Dominicans began the work by converting Don Luis, Jesuits followed it up by actual possession, by erecting a chapel, by instituting a regular community life, by instructing, baptizing, and hallowing the land by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The flag of Spain and the flag of England have alike passed away, but on the banks of the Potomac Jesuit and Dominican are laboring side by side three hundred years after the martyrdom of Segura, Quiros, and their companions.

Fredericksburg, which cannot be far from the early Chapel of the Mother of God, revives its name in her Church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception; and other churches of the same invocation seem to declare that, as of old, so now we may say, “This is indeed the Blessed Virgin's land.”

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