The Voyage of Francisco de Gualle, or Gali, in 1584.—Of Viscaino, in in 1598.—River of Martin d’Aguilar.—Cessation of Spanish Enterprises.—Jesuit Missions in California in the 18th century.—Voyage of Behring and Tchiricoff in 1741.—Presidios in Upper California.—Voyage of Juan Perez in 1774; of Heceta and de la Bodega in 1775.—Heceta’s Inlet.—Port Bucareli.—Bay of Bodega.—Hearne’s Journey to the Coppermine River.—Captain James Cook in 1776.—Russian Establishments, in 1783, as far as Prince William’s Sound; in 1787, as far as Mount Elias.—Expeditions from Macao, under the Portuguese flag, in 1785 and 1786; under that of the British East India Company in 1786.—Voyage of La Perouse in 1786.—King George’s Sound Company.—Portland and Dixon, in 1786.—Meares and Tipping, in 1786, under Flag of East India Company.—Duncan and Colnett in 1787.—Captain Barclay discovers in 1787 the Straits in 48° 30′, to which Meares gives the name of Juan de Fuca in 1788.—Prince of Wales’s Archipelago.—Gray and Kendrick.
The Voyage of Francisco de Gualle, or Gali, in 1584.—Of Viscaino, in in 1598.—River of Martin d’Aguilar.—Cessation of Spanish Enterprises.—Jesuit Missions in California in the 18th century.—Voyage of Behring and Tchiricoff in 1741.—Presidios in Upper California.—Voyage of Juan Perez in 1774; of Heceta and de la Bodega in 1775.—Heceta’s Inlet.—Port Bucareli.—Bay of Bodega.—Hearne’s Journey to the Coppermine River.—Captain James Cook in 1776.—Russian Establishments, in 1783, as far as Prince William’s Sound; in 1787, as far as Mount Elias.—Expeditions from Macao, under the Portuguese flag, in 1785 and 1786; under that of the British East India Company in 1786.—Voyage of La Perouse in 1786.—King George’s Sound Company.—Portland and Dixon, in 1786.—Meares and Tipping, in 1786, under Flag of East India Company.—Duncan and Colnett in 1787.—Captain Barclay discovers in 1787 the Straits in 48° 30′, to which Meares gives the name of Juan de Fuca in 1788.—Prince of Wales’s Archipelago.—Gray and Kendrick.
The Spaniards had long coveted a position in the East Indies, but the Bull of Pope Alexander VI. precluded them from sailing eastward round the Cape of Good Hope; they had, in consequence, made many attempts to find their way thither across the Pacific. It was not, however, till 1564, that they succeeded in establishing themselves in the Philippine Islands. Thenceforth Spanish galleons sailed annually from Acapulco to Manilla, and back by Macao. The trade winds wafted them directly across from New Spain in about three months: on their return they occupied about double that time, and generally reached up into a northerly latitude, in order to avail themselves of the prevailing north-westers, which carried them to the shores of California.
An expedition of this kind is the next historical record of voyages on this coast, after Drake’s visit. Hakluyt has published the navigator’s own account of it in his edition of 1600, as the “True and perfect Description of a Voyage performed and done by Francisco de Gualle, a Spanish Captain and Pilot, &c., in the Year of our Lord 1584.” It purports tohave been translated out of the original Spanish, verbatim, into Low Dutch, by J. H. van Lindschoten; and thence into English by Hakluyt. According to this version of it, Gualle, on his return from Macao, made the coast of New Spain “under seven-and-thirty degrees and a half.” The author of the “Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdés” has substituted 57½ for 37½ degrees in Gualle’s, or rather Gali’s, account, without stating any reason for it. Mr. Greenhow, indeed, refers to a note of that author’s, as intimating that he relied upon the evidence of papers found in the archives of the Indies, but on examining the note in p. xlvi., it evidently refers to two letters from the Archbishop of Mexico, then Viceroy of New Spain, to the King, in reference to an expedition which he proposed to intrust to Jayme Juan, for the discovery of the Straits of Anian. It is true that the Archbishop is stated to have consulted Gali upon his project, but the author of the “Introduction” specially alludes to Lindschoten, as the person to whom the account of Gali’s Voyage in 1582 was due, and refers to a French Translation of Lindschoten’s work, under the title of “Le Grand Routier de Mer,” published at Amsterdam in 1638. But Lindschoten’s original work was written in the Dutch language, being intitled “Reysgeschrift van de Navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten,” and was published towards the end of the sixteenth century; and two English translations of Gali’s Voyage immediately appeared, one in Wolf’s edition of Lindschoten, in 1598; the other in the third volume of Hakluyt, 1598-1600. Lindschoten’s own Dutch version was subsequently inserted in Witsen’s “Nord en Oost Tarterye,” in 1692. All these latter accounts, including the original, agree in stating seven-and-thirty degrees and a half as the latitude where Gali discovered “a very high and fair land, with many trees, and wholly without snow.” The passage in the original Dutch may be referred to in Burney’s History of Voyages, vol. v., p. 164. The French translation, however, which the author of the Introduction consulted, gives 57½°, the number being expressed in figures; but as this seems to be the only authority for the change, it can hardly justify it. “A high land,” observes Captain Burney, “ornamented with trees, and entirely without snow, is not inapplicable to the latitude of 37½°, but would not be credible if said of the American coast in 57½° N., though nothing were known of the extraordinary high mountains which are on the western side of America in thatparallel.” It may be observed, that the French translator has likewise misstated the course which Gali held in reaching across from Japan to the American coast, by rendering “east and east-by-north” in the original, as “east and north-east” in the French version, making a difference of three points in the compass, which would take him much farther north than his true course.
M. Eyriés, in the article “Gali,” in the Biographie Universelle, puts forward the same view of the cause of the variation of the latitude in the account adopted by the author of the Introduction, namely, that it was derived from the French translation which he consulted. The words in the French version of the Grand Routier de Mer are; “Estans venus suivant ce mesme cours près de la coste de la Nouvelle Espagne à la hauteur de 57 degrez et demi, nous approchasmes d’un haut et fort beau pays, orné de nombre d’arbres et entièrement sans neige.” M. Eyriés, however, has fallen into a curious mistake, as he represents Gali to have made the identical voyage which is the subject of the narrative, in company with Jayme Juan, in execution of the project of the Viceroy of Mexico, which was never accomplished, instead of his having made the account of the voyage for him. That M. Eyriés is in error will be evident, not merely from the account of the author of the Introduction, if more carefully examined, as well as from the title and conclusion of the Voyage of Gali itself, as given in Hakluyt’s translation of the Dutch version of Lindschoten; but also from this circumstance, which seems to be conclusive. M. de Contreras, Archbishop of Mexico, was Viceroy of New Spain for the short space of one year only, and the letters which he wrote to the King of Spain, submitting his project of an expedition to explore the north-west coast of America for his Majesty’s approval, bore date the 22d January and 8th March, 1585. But Gali commenced his voyage from Acapulco in March 1582, and had returned by the year 1584, most probably before the Archbishop had entered upon his office of Viceroy, certainly before he submitted his plans to the King, which he had matured after consultation with Gali. It is difficult to account for M. Eyriés’ mistake, unless it originated in an imperfect acquaintance with the Spanish language, as the statement by the author of the Introduction is by no means obscure. Gali’s voyage was thus a private mercantile enterprise, and not an expedition authorised and directed by the Government of New Spain,which the account of M. Eyriés might lead his reader to suppose. It has acquired, accidentally, rather more importance of late than it substantially deserves, from the circumstance of its having been cited in support of the Spanish title to the north-west coast of America; it has consequently been thought to merit a fuller examination on the present occasion, as to its true limits northward, which clearly fall short of those attained by the Spaniards under Ferrelo, and very far short of those reached by the British under Drake.
The next authentic expeditions on these coasts were those conducted by Sebastian Viscaino. The growing rumours of the discovery of the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific by the Straits of Anian, and the necessity of providing accurate charts for the vessels engaged in the trade between New Spain and the Philippine islands, induced Philip II. to direct an expedition to be dispatched from Acapulco in 1596, to survey the coasts. Nothing however of importance was accomplished on this occasion, but on the succession of Philip III. in 1598, fresh orders were despatched to carry into execution the intentions of his predecessor. Thirty-two charts, according to Humboldt, prepared by Henri Martinez, a celebrated engineer, prove that Viscaino surveyed these coasts with unprecedented care and intelligence. “The sickness, however, of his crew, the want of provisions, and the extreme severity of the season, prevented his advancing further north than a headland in the 42d parallel, to which he gave the name of Cape Sebastian.” The smallest of his three vessels, however, conducted by Martin d’Aguilar and Antonio Florez, doubled Cape Mendocino, and reached the 43d parallel, where they found the mouth of a river which Cabrillo has been supposed by some to have previously discovered in 1543, and which was for some time considered to be the western extremity of the long-sought Straits of Anian. The subsequent report of the captain of a Manilla ship, in 1620, according to Mr. Greenhow, led the world to adopt a different view, and to suppose that it was the mouth of a passage into the northern extremity of the Gulf of California; and accordingly, in maps of the later half of the seventeenth century, California was represented to be an island, of which Cape Blanco was the northernmost headland. After this error had been corrected by the researches of the Jesuit Kuhn, in 1709, we find in the maps of the eighteenth century, such as that of Guillaume de Lisle, published in Paris in 1722, California a peninsula, CapeBlanco a headland in 45°, and near it marked “Entrée découverte par d’Aguilar.”
With Gali and Viscaino terminates the brilliant period of Spanish discoveries along the north-west coast of America. The governors of New Spain during the remainder of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, confined their attention to securing the shores of the peninsula of California against the armed vessels of hostile Powers, which, after the discovery of the passage round Cape Horn in 1616, by the Dutch navigators Lemaire and Van Schouten, carried on their depredations in the Pacific with increasing frequency. The country itself of California, was in 1697 subjected, by a royal warrant, to an experimental process of civilisation at the hands of the Jesuits, which their success in Paraguay emboldened them to undertake. In about sixty years a chain of missions was established along the whole eastern side of California, and the followers of Loyola may be considered to have ruled the country, till the decree issued by Charles III. in 1767, for the immediate banishment of the society from the Spanish dominions, led to their expulsion from the New World. During this long period, the only expedition of discovery that ventured into these seas was that which Behring and Tchiricoff led forth in 1741 from the shores of Kamtchatka, under the Russian flag. Behring’s own voyage southward is not supposed to have extended beyond the 60th parallel of north latitude, where he discovered a stupendous mountain, visible at the distance of more than eighty miles, to which he gave the name of Mount St. Elias, which it still bears. The account is derived from the journal of Steller, the naturalist of Behring’s ship, which Professor Pallas first published in 1795, as Behring himself died on his voyage home, in one of the islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, between 54½ and 55½ degrees north latitude. Here his vessel had been wrecked, and the island still bears the name of the Russian navigator. Tchiricoff, on the other hand, advanced further eastward, and the Russians themselves maintain that he pushed his discoveries as far south as the 49th parallel of north latitude, (Letter from the Chevalier de Poletica, Russian Minister, to the Secretary of State at Washington, February 28, 1822, in British and Foreign State Papers, 1821-22, p. 483;) but this has been disputed. Mr. Greenhow considers, from the description of the latitude and bearings of the land discovered by him,that it must have been one of the islands of the Prince of Wales’s Archipelago, in about 56°.
The discoveries of the Russians, of which vague rumours had found their way into Europe, and of which a detailed account was given to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, in 1750, by J. N. de l’Isle, the astronomer, on his return from St. Petersburg, revived the attention of Spain to the importance of securing her possessions in the New World against the encroachments of other Powers. It was determined that the vacant coasts and islands adjacent to the settled provinces of New Spain should be occupied, so as to protect them against casual expeditions, and that the more distant shores should be explored, so as to secure to the crown of Spain a title to them, on the grounds of first discovery. With this object “the Marine Department of San Blas” was organised, and was charged with the superintendence of all operations by sea. Its activity was evinced by the establishment of eight “Presidios” along the coast in Upper California, in the interval of the ten years immediately preceding 1779. Of these San Diego, in 32° 39′ 30″, was the most southerly; San Francisco, in 38° 48′ 30″, the most northerly. During the same period, three expeditions of discovery were dispatched from San Blas. The earliest of these sailed forth in January, 1774, under the command of Juan Perez, but its results were not made known before 1802, when the narrative of the expedition of the Sutil and Mexicana was published, as already stated. According to this account, Perez, having touched at San Diego and Monterey, steered out boldly into the open sea, and made the coast of America again in 53° 53′ north. In the latitude of 55° he discovered a headland, to which he gave the name of Santa Margarita, at the northern extremity of Queen Charlotte’s Island. The strait which separates this island from that of the Prince of Wales, is henceforward marked in Spanish maps as the Entrada de Perez. A scanty supply of water, however, soon compelled him to steer southward, and he cast anchor in the Bay of San Lorenzo in 49° 30′, in the month of August, and for a short time engaged in trade with the natives. Spanish writers identify the bay of San Lorenzo with that to which Captain Cook, four years afterwards, gave the name of Nootka Sound. Perez was prevented from landing on this coast by the stormy state of the weather, and his vessel was obliged to cut her cables, and put to sea with the loss of her anchors. He is supposed, in coasting southward, to have caught sightof Mount Olympus in 47° 47′. Having determined the true latitude of C. Mendocino, he returned to San Blas, after about eight months’ absence. Unfortunately for the fame of Perez, the claim now maintained for him to the discovery of Nootka Sound, was kept secret by the Spaniards till after general consent had assigned it to Captain Cook. The Spaniards have likewise advanced a claim to the discovery of the Straits of Fuca, upon the authority of Don Esteban José Martinez, the pilot of the Santiago, Perez’ vessel; who, according to Mr. Greenhow, announced many years afterwards that he remembered to have observed a wide opening in the land between 48° and 49°: and they have consequently marked in their charts the headland at the entrance of the straits as Cape Martinez. No allusion, however, is made to this claim in the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana, nor in Humboldt’s New Spain.
In the following year (1775) a second expedition sailed from San Blas under the orders of Don Bruno Heceta, Don Juan de Ayala, and Don Juan de la Bodega y Quadra. The Spanish government observed their usual prudent silence as to the results of this expedition, but the journal of Antonio Maurelle, “the second pilot of the fleet,” who acted as pilot in the Senora, which Bodega commanded, fell into the hands of the Hon. Daines Barrington, who published an English translation of it in his Miscellanies, in 1781. There are four other accounts in MS. amongst the archives at Madrid. From one of these, the journal of Heceta himself, a valuable extract is given in Mr. Greenhow’s Appendix. Their first discovery north of C. Mendocino, was a small port in 41° 7′, to which they gave the name of La Trinidad, and where they fixed up a cross, which Vancouver found still remaining in 1793. They then quitted the coast, and did not make the land again till they reached 48° 26′, whence they examined the shore in vain towards the south for the supposed Strait of Fuca, which was placed in Bellin’s fanciful chart, constructed in 1766, between 47° and 48°. Having had seven of the Senora’s men massacred by the natives in the latitude of 47° 20′, where twelve years later a portion of the crew of the Imperial Eagle were surprised and murdered, they resumed their voyage northward, though Heceta, owing to the sickness of his crew, was anxious to return. A storm soon afterwards separated the two vessels, and Heceta returned southward. On his voyage homewards he first made the land on the 10th ofAugust, in 49° 30′, on the south-west side of the great island now known as Vancouver’s Island, and passing the part which Perez had visited, came upon the main land below the entrance of the Straits of Fuca. On the 17th of August, as he was sailing along the coast between 46° 40′ and 46° 4′, according to Heceta’s own report, or in 46° 9′ according to the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana, Heceta discovered a great bay, the head of which he could no where recognise. So strong, however, were the currents and eddies of the water, that he believed it to be “the mouth of some great river, or passage to another sea.” He was disposed, according to his own statement, to conceive it to be the same with the Straits of Fuca, as he was satisfied no such straits existed between 47° and 48°, where they were laid down in the charts. He did not, however, venture to cast anchor; and the force of the currents, during the night, swept him too far to leeward to allow him to examine it any further. Heceta named the northern headland of the bay, C. San Roque; and the southern headland, C. Frondoso; and to the bay itself he gave the name of the Assumption, though, in the Spanish charts, according to Humboldt, it is termed “l’Ensenada de Ezeta,” Heceta’s Inlet. Heceta likewise gave the name of C. Falcon to a headland in 45° 43′, known since as C. Lookout; and continuing his course to the southward along the coast, reached Monterey on August 30th.
De la Bodega, in the mean time, had stretched out to 56°, when he unexpectedly made the coast, 135 leagues more to the westward than Bellin’s chart had led him to expect. He soon afterwards discovered the lofty conical mountain in King George III.’s Archipelago, to which he gave the name of San Jacinto, and which Cook subsequently called Mount Edgecumb, and having reached the 58th parallel, turned back to examine that portion of the coast, where the Rio de los Reyes was placed in the story of the adventures of Admiral Fonte. Having looked for this fabulous stream in vain, they landed and took possession of the shores of an extensive bay, in 55° 30′, in the Prince of Wales’ Archipelago, which they named Port Bucareli, in honour of the Viceroy. Proceeding southward, they observed the Entrada de Perez, north of Queen Charlotte’s Island; but, though coasting from 49° within a mile of the shore, according to Maurelle’s account, they overlooked the entrance of Fuca’s Straits. A little below 47° unfavourable winds drove them off the coast, which they madeonce more in 45° 27′; from which parallel they searched in vain to 42° for the river of Martin d’Aguilar. In the latitude of 38° 18′ they reached a spacious and sheltered bay, which they had imagined to be Port San Francisco; but it proved to be a distinct bay, not yet laid down in any chart, so De la Bodega bestowed his own name upon it, having noted in his journal that it was here that Sir Francis Drake careened his ship. Vancouver, however, considered the bay of Sir Francis Drake to be distinct from this bay of Bodega, as well as from that of San Francisco.
Expeditions had been, in the mean time, made by direction of the Hudson’s Bay Company, across the northern regions of North America, to determine, if possible, the existence of the supposed northern passage between Hudson’s Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Samuel Hearne, one of the Company’s agents, in 1771, in the course of one of these journeys, succeeded in tracing a river, since known as the Coppermine River, to a sea, where the flux and reflux of the tide was observed. Hearne calculated the mouth of this river to be in about 72° north latitude; and he had assured himself, by his own observations, that no channel connecting the two seas extended across the country which he had traversed. It appears that a parliamentary grant of 20,000l.had been voted, in 1745, by the House of Commons, for the discovery of a north-west passage, through Hudson’s Bay, by ships belonging to his Britannic Majesty’s subjects; and in 1776, this reward was further extended to the ships of his Majesty, which might succeed in discovering a northern passage between the two oceans, in any direction or under any parallel north of 52°. The Lords of the British Admiralty, in pursuance of Hearne’s report, determined on sending out an expedition to explore the north-easternmost coast of the Pacific; and Captain James Cook, who had just returned from an expedition in the southern hemisphere, was ordered, in 1776, to proceed round the Cape of Good Hope to the coast of New Albion, in 45 degrees. He was besides directed to avoid all interference with the establishments of European Powers: to explore the coast northward, after reaching New Albion, up to 65°; and there to commence a search for a river or inlet which might communicate with Hudson’s Bay. He was further directed to take possession, in the name of his sovereign, of any countries which he might discover to be uninhabited; and if there should be inhabitants in any parts not yet discoveredby other European powers, to take possession of them, with the consent of the natives. No authentic details of any discoveries had been made public by the Spaniards since the expedition of Viscaino, in 1602, though rumours of certain voyages along the north-west coast of America, made by order of the viceroy of New Spain, in the two preceding years, had reached England shortly before Cook sailed; but the information was too vague to afford Cook any safe directions.
The expedition reached the shores of New Albion in 44° north, and thence coasted at some distance off up to 48°. Cook arrived at the same conclusion which Heceta had adopted, that between 47° and 48° north there were no Straits of Fuca, as alleged. He seems to have passed unobserved the arm of the sea a little further northward, having most probably struck across to the coast of Vancouver’s Island, which trends north-westward. Having now reached the parallel of 49° 30′, he cast anchor in a spacious bay, to which he gave the name of King George’s Sound; but the name of Nootka, borrowed from the natives, has since prevailed. It has been supposed, as already stated, that Nootka Sound was the bay in which Perez cast anchor, and which he named Port San Lorenzo; and that the implements of European manufacture, which Captain Cook, to his great surprise, found in the possession of one of the natives, were obtained on that occasion from the Spaniards. The first notification, however, of the existence of this important harbour, dates from this visit of Captain Cook, who continued his voyage northward up to the 59th parallel, and from that point commenced his survey of the coast, in the hope of discovering a passage into the Atlantic. It is unnecessary to trace his course onward. Although Spanish navigators claim to have seen portions of the coast of North America between the limits of 43° and 55° prior to his visit, yet their discoveries had not been made public, and their observations had been too cursory and vague to lead to any practical result. Captain Cook is entitled, beyond dispute, to the credit of having first dispelled the popular errors respecting the extent of the continents of America and Asia, and their respective proximity: and as Drake, according to Fletcher, changed the name of the land south of Magellan’s Straits from Terra Incognita to Terra nunc bene Cognita, so Cook was assuredly entitled to change the name of the North Pacific Sea from “Mare Incognitum” to “Mare nunc bene Cognitum.”
On the return of the vessels engaged in this expedition to England, where they arrived in October, 1780, it was thought expedient by the Board of Admiralty to delay the publication of an authorised account, as Great Britain was engaged in hostilities with the United States in America, and with France and Spain in the Old World. The Russians in the mean time hastened to avail themselves of the information which they had obtained when Captain King, on his way homewards by China, touched at the harbor of Petropawlosk, and an association was speedily formed amongst the fur merchants of Siberia and Kamtchatka to open a trade with the shores of the American continent. An expedition was in consequence dispatched in 1783, for the double purpose of trading and exploring, and several trading posts were established between Aliaska and Prince William’s Sound. Mr. Greenhow (p. 161) assigns to this period the Russian establishment on the island of Kodiak, near the entrance of the bay called Cook’s Bay, but the Russian authorities refer this settlement to a period as remote as 1763. (Letter from the Chevalier de Poletica to the Secretary of State at Washington, 28th February, 1822. British and Foreign State Papers, 1821-22, p. 484.) The Russian establishments seem to have extended themselves in 1787, and the following year as far as Admiralty Bay, at the foot of Mount Elias. The publication, however, of the journals of Cook’s expedition, which took place in 1784-5, soon introduced a host of rival traders into these seas. Private expeditions were dispatched from Macao, under the Portuguese flag, in 1785 and 1786, and under the flag of the East India Company in 1786. In the month of June of this latter year, La Perouse, in command of a French expedition of discovery, arrived off the coast, and cast anchor in a bay near the foot of Mount Fairweather, in about 59°, which he named Port des Français. He thence skirted the coast southward past Port Bucareli, the western shores of Queen Charlotte’s Island, and Nootka, and reached Monterey in September, where having stayed sixteen days, he bade adieu to the north-west coast of America. La Perouse seems first to have suspected the separation of Queen Charlotte’s Island from the continent, but as no account of the results of this expedition was published before 1797, other navigators forestalled him in the description of nearly all the places which he had visited.
In the August of 1785, in which year La Perouse hadsailed, an association in London, styled the King George’s Sound Company, dispatched two vessels under the command of Captains Dixon and Portlock, to trade with the natives on the American coast, under the protection of licences from the South Sea Company, and in correspondence with the East India Company. They reached Cook’s River in July 1786, where they met with Russian traders, and intended to winter in Nootka Sound, but were driven off the coast by tempestuous weather to the Sandwich Isles. Returning northward in the spring of 1787, they found Captain Meares, with his vessel the Nootka, frozen up in Prince William’s Sound. Meares had left Calcutta in January 1786, whilst his intended consort, the Sea Otter, commanded by Captain Tipping, had been dispatched to Malacca, with instructions to proceed to the north-west coast of America; and there carry on a fur trade in company with the Nootka. Both these vessels sailed under the flag of the East India Company. Meares, after having with some difficulty got clear of the Russian establishment at Kodiak, reached Cook’s River soon after Dixon and Portlock had quitted it, and proceeded to Prince William’s Sound, where he expected to meet the Sea Otter; but Captain Tipping and his vessel were never seen by him again after leaving Calcutta, though Meares was led by the natives to suppose that his consort had sailed from Prince William’s Sound a few days before his arrival. He determined, however, to pass the winter here, in preference to sailing to the Sandwich Isles, lest he should be prevented returning to the coast of America. Here indeed the severity of the cold, coupled with scurvy, destroyed more than half of his crew, and the survivors were found in a state of extreme distress by Dixon and Portlock, on their return to the coast in the following spring.
We have now reached a period when many minute and detached discoveries took place. Prince William’s Sound and Nootka appear to have been the two great stations of the fur trade, and it seems to have been customary, in most of the trading expeditions of this period, that two vessels should be dispatched in company, so as to divide the labor of visiting the trading posts along the coast. Thus, whilst Portlock remained between Prince William’s Sound and Mount St. Elias, Dixon directed his course towards Nootka, and being convinced on his voyage, from the reports of the natives, that the land between 52° and 54° was separated from the continent, as La Perouse had suspected, he did not hesitate to call it QueenCharlotte’s Island, from the name of his vessel, and to give to the passage to the northward of it, which is marked on Spanish maps as the Entrada de Perez, the name of Dixon’s Entrance. Before Dixon and Portlock quitted these coasts, in 1787, other vessels had arrived to share in the profits of the fur trade. Amongst these the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales had been despatched from England, by the King George’s Sound Company, under command of Captains Duncan and Colnett; whilst the Imperial Eagle, under Captain Barclay, an Englishman, displayed in those seas for the first time the flag of the Austrian East India Company. To a boat’s crew belonging to this latter vessel Captain Meares assigns the discovery of the straits in 48° 30′, to which he himself gave in the following year the name of Juan de Fuca, from the old Greek pilot, whose curious story has been preserved in Purchas’ Pilgrims. (Introduction to Meares’ Voyages, p. lv.) Meares had succeeded in returning to Macao with the Nootka, in October, 1787. In the next year he was once more upon the American coast, as two other vessels, named the Felice and Iphigenia, were despatched from Macao, under Meares and Captain Douglas respectively, the former being sent direct to Nootka, the latter being ordered to make for Cook’s River, and thence proceeding southward to join her consort. Meares, in his Observations on a North-west Passage, states that Captain Douglas anticipated Captain Duncan, of the Princess Royal, in being the first to sail through the Channel which separates Queen Charlotte’s Island from the main land, and thereby confirming the suppositions of La Perouse and Dixon. Captain Duncan, however, appears at all events to have explored this part of the coast more carefully than Douglas had done, and he first discovered the group of small islands, which he named the Prince of Wales’ Archipelago. The announcement of this discovery seemed to some persons to warrant them in giving credit once more to the exploded story of Admiral Fonte’s voyage, and revived the expectation of discovering the river, which the admiral is described to have ascended near 53° into a lake communicating with the Atlantic Ocean. It is almost needless to observe, that these expectations have never been realised.
The names of several vessels have been omitted in this brief summary, which were engaged in the fur trade subsequently to the year 1785. Two vessels, however, require notice,—the Washington under Captain Gray, and the Columbiaunder Captain Kendrick, which were despatched from Boston, under the American flag, in August, 1787. Captain Gray reached Nootka Sound, on Sept. 17, 1788, and found Meares preparing to launch a small vessel called the North-west America, which he had built there. The Columbia does not appear to have joined her consort till after the departure of Meares and his companions. Meares himself set sail in the Felice for China, on Sept. 23, whilst the Iphigenia proceeded with the North-west America to the Sandwich Islands, and wintered there. In the spring of 1789, the two latter vessels returned to Nootka Sound, and found the Columbia had joined her consort the Washington, and both had wintered there. The North-west America was despatched forthwith on a trading expedition northward, whilst the Iphigenia remained at anchor in Nootka Sound.
Events were now at hand which were attended with very important consequences in determining the relations of Spain and Great Britain towards each other in respect to the trade with the natives on their coasts, and to the right of forming settlements among them. These will fitly be reserved, as introductory to the Convention of the Escurial, which will be discussed in a subsequent Chapter.
ON THE PRETENDED DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTH-WEST COAST.
Memoir of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, in 1588.—Voyage of the Descubierta and Atrevida, in 1791.—Tale of Juan de Fuca, in 1592.—Voyages of Meares, Vancouver, and Lieutenant Wilkes.—Letter of Admiral Bartolemé Fonte or de Fuentes, in 1640.—Memoir of J. N. de l’Isle and Ph. Buache, in 1750.—California discovered to be a Peninsula in 1540; reported to be an Island in 1620; re-explored by the Jesuit Kuhn and others, in 1701-21.—Maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries.—Fonte’s Letter, a jeu-d’esprit of Petiver, the Naturalist.
Memoir of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, in 1588.—Voyage of the Descubierta and Atrevida, in 1791.—Tale of Juan de Fuca, in 1592.—Voyages of Meares, Vancouver, and Lieutenant Wilkes.—Letter of Admiral Bartolemé Fonte or de Fuentes, in 1640.—Memoir of J. N. de l’Isle and Ph. Buache, in 1750.—California discovered to be a Peninsula in 1540; reported to be an Island in 1620; re-explored by the Jesuit Kuhn and others, in 1701-21.—Maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries.—Fonte’s Letter, a jeu-d’esprit of Petiver, the Naturalist.
The general belief in the existence of a North-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in the direction of Gaspar de Cortereal’s reported Straits of Anian, led to the circulation of many false accounts of the discovery of the desired channel. The most celebrated fictions of this class seem to have originated with individuals who hoped to secure, through their pretended knowledge and experience, future employment, as well as immediate emolument. A memoir of this kind is reported to have been laid before the Council of the Indies at Seville, in 1609, by Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, who professed to have sailed in 1588 from Lisbon to the coast of Labrador, and thence into the South Sea through a channel in 60° north latitude, corresponding to the Strait of Anian, according to ancient tradition. He petitioned, in consequence, that he might be rewarded for his services, and be entrusted with an expedition to occupy the Strait of Anian, and defend the passage against other nations. His cotemporaries, according to the author of the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana, were men of more judgment and intelligence than some of the writers of the 18th century. The former at once discovered, by personal examination of the author, the fictitious character of his narrative, and rejected his proposal. Two copies of this memoir are supposed to exist; one of these being preserved in the library of the Duke of Infantado at Madrid, the other in the Ambrosian Library atMilan. The former of these is considered by the author of the Introduction to be certainly a cotemporaneous, and perhaps the original, copy of the memoir: the Ambrosian manuscript, on the other hand, has been pronounced, in an article in the London Quarterly Review for October, 1816, to be “the clumsy and audacious forgery of some ignorant German,” from the circumstance of fifteen leagues to the degree being used in some of the computations. To the same purpose Capt. James Burney, in the fifth volume of his Voyages, published in 1817, observes, that “it must not be omitted that the reckoning in the narrative is in German leagues. It is said, ‘from the latitude of 64° you will have to sail 120 leagues to the latitude of 72°, which corresponds with the German league of 15 to a degree, and not with the Spanish league of 17½ to a degree, by which last the early Spanish navigators were accustomed to reckon.’ From this peculiarity in the narrative it may be conjectured, that the real author was a Fleming, who probably thought he could not better advance his spurious offspring, than by laying it at the door of a man who had projected to invent a compass without variation,” as Maldonado professed to do to the Council of the Indies, according to Antonio Leo in his Bibliotheca Indica.
Allusions had been occasionally made to this work by Spanish writers in the 17th century, amongst others by De Luque, the author of the “Establecimientos Ultramarinos de las Naceones Europeas.” It was not, however, till so late a period as 1790 that the attention of men of science was drawn to the Madrid manuscript by J. N. Buache, the geographer of the King of France, in a paper read before the Academy of Sciences at Paris in that year. Captain Burney states, that the manuscript had been brought to notice shortly before by M. de Mendoza, a captain in the Spanish navy, who was employed in forming a collection of voyages for the use of that service. M. Buache, who had succeeded D’Anville as Geographer Royal in 1768, followed the geographical system of Ph. Buache, his relative and predecessor, and, like him, clung fondly to questionable discoveries. He had been employed to prepare instructions for the expedition of La Perouse, and thus his attention had been especially drawn to voyages of discovery on the north-west coast of America. He declared himself in his memoir so strongly in favor of the genuineness of the manuscript, and of the good faith of Maldonado, that the Spanish government, in order that the question might bedefinitively set at rest, directed its archives to be searched, and the manuscript in the library of the Duke of Infantado to be carefully examined, and at the same time gave orders that the corvettes Descubierta and Atrevida, which were fitting out at Acapulco for a voyage round the world, should explore the coasts and port which Maldonado pretended to have discovered in the South Sea. The archives, however, furnished ample evidence of the correctness of the ancient opinion that Maldonado was an impostor, and the expedition of the corvettes, which sailed in 1791, confirmed this fact beyond dispute. A memoir to that effect, founded upon their observations, was published in 1797, by Don Ciriaco Cevallos, who had accompanied the expedition, to prove the utter falsity of Maldonado’s story.
It was, however, once more revived by the discovery of the Ambrosian manuscript in 1812 by Carlo Amoretti. This is said to give a more succinct account than the Madrid document, and it has been thought by some to be an abridgment of it. The article in the Quarterly Review above alluded to was occasioned by its appearance, and to the curious will furnish ample information. The Milan account of the voyage may be referred to in the fifth volume of Burney’s History of Voyages. The Madrid document will be found in Barrow’s Chronological History of Voyages in the Arctic Regions.
A much more plausible narrative was published in 1625, in the third volume of “The Pilgrims,” by Purchas, the successor of Hakluyt as the historian of maritime enterprises. It is entitled “A Note made by me, Michael Lock the elder, touching the Strait of Sea, commonly called Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the North-west Passage of Meta Incognita.” The writer purported to give an account of what had been communicated to him at Venice, in April, 1596, by an ancient Greek pilot, commonly called Juan de Fuca, but properly named Apostolos Valerianus, who represented himself to have been taken in a Spanish ship by Captain Candish, and to have thereby lost 60,000 ducats, and to have been at another time sent by the Viceroy of Mexico to discover and fortify the Straits of Anian. His tale was to this effect: “That shortly afterwards, having been sent again, in 1592, by the Viceroy of Mexico, with a small caravel and pinnace, armed with mariners only, he followed the coast of North America until he came to the latitude of 47°, and there finding that the land trended east and north-east, with a broadinlet of sea between 47 and 48 degrees of latitude, he entered thereinto, sailing therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometimes north-west and north-east and north, and also east, and south-eastward, and very much broader sea than was at the said entrance, and that he passed by divers islands in that sailing. And that at the entrance of this said strait, there ison the north-west coastthereof a great headland or island, with an exceeding high pinnacle or spired rock, like a pillar, thereupon.
“Also, he said, he went on land in divers places, and there he saw some people on land, clad is beasts’ skins; and that the land isvery fruitful, and rich of gold, silver, pearls, and other things, like new Spain.
“And also, he said, that he being entered thus far into the said strait, and beingcome into the North Seaalready, and finding the sea wide enough everywhere, and to be aboutthirty or forty leagues wide in the mouth of the straits, where he entered, he thought that he had now well discharged his office, and that not being armed to resist the force of the savage people that might happen, he therefore set sail, and returned homewards again towards New Spain, where he arrived at Acapulco, anno 1592, hoping to be rewarded by the Viceroy for the service done in the said voyage.
“Also, he said that, after coming to Mexico, he was greatly welcomed by the Viceroy, and had promises of great reward; but that having sued there for two years, and obtained nothing to his content, the Viceroy told him that he should be rewarded in Spain of the King himself very greatly, and willed him therefore to go to Spain, which voyage he did perform.
“Also, he said, that when he was come into Spain, he was welcomed there at the King’s court; but after long suit there also, he could not get any reward there to his content. And therefore at length he stole away out of Spain, and came into Italy, to go home again and live among his own kindred and countrymen, he being very old.
“Also, he said, that he thought the cause of his ill reward had of the Spaniards, to be for that they did understand very well that theEnglish nation had now given over all their voyages for discovery of the North-west Passage, wherefore they need not fear them any more to come that way into the South Sea, and therefore they needed not his service therein any more.
“Also, he said, thatunderstanding the noble mind of the Queen of England, of her wars against the Spaniards, and hoping that her majesty woulddo him justice for his goods lostby Captain Candish, he would be content to go into England,and serve her majesty in that voyage for the discovery perfectly of the north-west passage into the South Sea, if she would furnish him with only one ship of forty tons burthen and a pinnace, and that he would perform it in thirty days time from one end to the other of the straits, and he wished me so to write to England.”
As this asserted discovery was one upon which the Spanish commissioner, in the negotiations antecedent to the Treaty of the Floridas, relied to support the claim of the Spanish crown to the north-west coast of America, and as authors of late whose opinions are entitled to respect, such as Fleurieu, and Mr. Greenhow, have inclined to admit the general truth of the account, the substantial part of it has been quoted at full length, as it appears both that Fuca’s narrative, if we admit it to be genuine, does not accord, in respect to any substantial fact, with the authentic reports of subsequent voyages, and that the object of the fiction is patent on the face of the story.
The object of the Greek pilot was evidently to obtain, upon the faith of his narrative, employment from the Queen of England; and as, from his own statement, he was aware that the spirit of discovery was for the moment languid amongst the English nation, he represented the country as “very fruitful and rich of gold, silver, pearls, and other things, like New Spain.” This exaggeration of the probable profits of the undertaking would not perhaps alone disentitle the narrator to credit in respect to the other circumstances of his voyage, though his integrity in making the communication might thereby become open to question: but when we look to the asserted facts of his voyage, the truth or falsehood of which must be conclusive as to the character of the narrative itself, we find that they do not correspond in any respect with ascertained facts. The straits to which Meares gave the name of Juan de Fuca in 1788, are between the 48th and 49th parallel. Mr. Greenhow considers that the difference in the position is sufficiently slight as to be within the limits of supposable error on the part of the Greek pilot; and certainly, if this were the only difficulty, it might not be conclusive against his veracity. But the straits which he professed to have discoveredwere from 30 to 40 leagues wide at the mouth where he entered, and according to his story he sailed through them into the North Sea, and upon the faith of this he offered to perfect his discovery of the north-west passage into the South Sea for the Queen of England, and to perform it in thirty days time from one end to the other of the straits. Now this description is so totally at variance with the real character of any straits on the west coast of America, that the happy coincidence of trifling circumstances can hardly be considered sufficient to turn the scale in its favor. Amongst the latter, the existence of a pillar has been alleged, as corresponding with De Fuca’s account. Meares, for instance, on approaching the straits from the north, speaks “of a small island, situated about two milesfrom the southern land, that formed the entrance of this strait, near which we saw a very remarkable rock, that wore the form of an obelisk, and stood at some distance from the island,” (p. 153,) which, in his Observations on a North-west Passage (p. lxi.) he seems to consider to be the pinnacle rock of De Fuca; but unfortunately De Fuca has placed his “island with an exceeding high pinnacle or spiral rock”on the north-west coast, at the entrance of the strait, instead of on the southern shore. Vancouver, on entering the straits, failed himself to recognize any rock as corresponding to the pinnacle rock which Mr. Meares had represented, but he observes that a rock within Tatooche’s Island,on the southern sideof the entrance, which is united to the main land by a ledge of rocks, over which the sea breaks violently, was noticed, and supposed to be that represented as De Fuca’s pinnacle rock: “this, however, was visible only for a few minutes, from its being close to the shore of the main-land, instead of lying in the entrance of the straits, nor did it correspond with that which has been so described.” On the other hand, Lieutenant Wilkes, in his Account of the United States Exploring Expedition, says, “In leaving De Fuca’s Straits, I anxiously watched for De Fuca’s Pillar, and soon obtained a sketch of it;” but he does not state whether he meant the pillar which Meares observed on the southern side, and called De Fuca’s Pillar, or one which, according to the Greek pilot, should have formed a prominent object on the north-western coast of the strait.
It is not unimportant to observe, that there is no Spanish writer who speaks of De Fuca or his discovery: that neither in any private archives in Spain, nor in the public archivesof the Indies at Seville, is there any notice of this celebrated navigator or of his important expedition, which the author of the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana observes is the more remarkable, from the great number of other voyages and expeditions of the same period preserved in the archives, which have escaped the notice of contemporary writers; and, what is perhaps still more conclusive, that Humboldt, in his account of New Spain, (l. iii., ch. viii.,) states, that in spite of all his researches he had not been able to find throughout New Spain a single document in which the name of the pilot De Fuca occurs.
The whole of these latter observations apply with equal force to the voyage of Admiral Bartolemé Fonte or de Fuentes, which purposes to have been performed in 1640; the narrative, however, did not make its appearance till 1708, when it was published in London, in two parts, in “The Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs of the Curious.” The mode in which it was ushered into public notice would alone be sufficient to expose it to considerable suspicion, and the gross absurdities with which it is replete would have at once exempted it from any serious criticism, had not the Spanish commissioner, in the negotiations already alluded to, and of which a full account will be given in a subsequent place, rested upon it the territorial title of Spain to the north-west coast, up to 55° of north latitude. Fonte, according to the narrative, sailed with four vessels from Callao into the North Pacific, with orders from the Viceroy of Peru to intercept certain vessels which had sailed from Boston in New England, with the object of exploring a north-west passage. On arriving at C. St. Lucas, at the south point of California, he despatched one of his vessels “to discover whether California was an island or not, (for before, it was not known whether it was an island or a peninsula.”) He thence coasted along California to 26° of north latitude, and having a steady gale from the S.S.E., in the interval between May 26, and June 14, “he reached the River los Reyes in 53° of north latitude, not having occasion to lower a top-sail in sailing 866 leagues N.N.W., 410 leagues from Port Abel to C. Blanco, 456 leagues to Rio de los Reyes, having sailed about 260 leagues in crooked channels, amongst islands named the Archipelagus de St. Lazarus, where his ships’ boats always sailed a mile a-head, sounding, to see what water, rocks, and sands there was.” “They had two Jesuits with them, that had been on their mission at 66°of N. L., and had made curious observations.” Fonte ascended the Rio de los Reyes in his ships to a large lake, which he called Lake Belle. Here, he says, he left his vessels and proceeded down another river, passing eight falls, in all 32 feet perpendicular, into a large lake which he named De Fonte. Thence he sailed out through the Estrecho de Ronquillo into the sea, where they found a large ship where the natives had never seen one before, from a town called Boston, the master of which, Captain Shaply, told him that his owner was “a fine gentleman, and major-general of the largest colony in New England, called the Maltechusets.” Having exchanged all sorts of civilities and presents with this gentleman, the admiral went back to his ships in Lake Belle, and returned by the Rio de los Reyes to the South Sea. One of his officers had in the mean time ascended another river, which he named Rio de Haro, in the lake Velasco, in 61°, whence he sailed in Indian boats as far north as 77°. Here he ascertained that there was no communication out of the Spanish or Atlantic Sea by Davis’ Straits, from one of his own seamen, who had been conducted by the natives to the head of Davis’ Strait, which terminated in a fresh lake of about 30 miles in circumference, in 80° N. L. He himself in the meantime had sailed as far north as 79°, and then the land trended north, and the ice rested on the land. The result of this expedition was, that they returned home, “having found there was no passage into the South Seas by what they call the North-west Passage.”
Such is the substance of this rather dull story, which may be read in full in the third volume of Burney’s History of Voyages in the South Sea, p. 190. Mr. Greenhow (p. 84) observes, that “the account is very confused and badly written, and is filled with absurdities and contradictions, which should have prevented it from receiving credit at any time since its appearance: yet, as will be shown, it was seriously examined and defended, so recently as in the middle of the last century, by scientific men of great eminence, and some faith continued to be attached to it for many years afterwards.”
Amongst its defenders the most conspicuous were J. N. de l’Isle, the brother of William de l’Isle, and Philippe Buache, the geographer of the French King, the predecessor of J. N. Buache, who has already been mentioned as the author of a memoir in defence of Maldonado’s narrative. De l’Isle presented to the Academy of Sciences, in 1750, a memoir “sur lesnouvelles découvertes au nord de la mer du Sud,” with a map prepared by Ph. Buache, to represent these discoveries. The communication was in other respects of great importance, as it contained the first authentic account of the discoveries lately made by Behring and Tchiricoff, in 1741. It is not stated from what source De l’Isle derived the copy of Fonte’s letter, which seems to have come into his possession accidentally at St. Petersburg, during the absence of the Russian expedition: it was not, however, till his return to France in 1747, that he examined it in company with Ph. Buache. They were agreeably surprised to find that it accorded with Buache’s own conjectures, that it harmonised in many respects with the discoveries of the Russians. In consequence, Buache laid down in his new map a water communication between the Pacific Ocean and Hudson’s Bay. Voltaire, relying on the authority of De l’Isle, maintained in his History of Russia, published in 1759, that the famous passage so long sought for had been at last discovered. The Academy, however, received Fonte’s narrative with discreet reserve; and observed, that it required more certain proofs to substantiate it.
The author of the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana states, that the Spanish government, on the representation of the French geographers, instituted a careful search into the archives of the Indies in New Spain, as well as into the archives of Peru, and likewise into the archives at Seville, Madrid, Cadiz, and other places, but that not the slightest allusion to De Fonte could be anywhere traced. This result was made known by Robert de Vaugondy, in his reply to Buache, intitled “Observations Critiques sur les nouvelles Découvertes de l’Amiral Fuentes, 8vo. 1753;” and the author of the Noticia di California, published in Madrid, in 1757, confirmed Vaugondy’s announcement.
It is unnecessary to observe, that the experience of subsequent navigators has failed to confirm the narrative of De Fonte. There is one passage in the narrative which seems almost of itself to be sufficient to condemn the story. The admiral is made to state, “that he despatched one of his vessels to discover whether California was an island or not; for before it was not known whether California was an island or a peninsula.” Now the Californian Gulf had been completely explored by Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539, who ascertained the fact of the junction of the peninsula to the main land, near the 32d degree of latitude; and again by Fernando deAlarcon, in 1540, who ascended a great river at the head of the Gulf of California, supposed to be the Colorado. A series of excellent charts were drawn up by Domingo del Castillo, Alarcon’s pilot, a fac-simile of which Mr. Greenhow (p. 61) states may be found in the edition of the letters of Cortez, published at Mexico in 1770, by Archbishop Lorenzana. The shores of the gulf, and of the west side of California, to the 30th degree of latitude, were there delineated with a surprising approach of accuracy. It is not a reasonable supposition that the Admiral of New Spain and Peru, who must have had ready access to the archives of the Indies at Mexico, should have expressed himself in a manner which argued a total ignorance of the previous discoveries of his countrymen; but it was very probable that a contributor to the Monthly Miscellany should stumble upon this ground, from a notion having been revived in Europe, about the middle of the 17th century, that California was an island.
Humboldt, in his Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, l. iii., c. viii., states, that when the Jesuits Kühn, Salvatierra, and Ugarte, explored, in detail, during the years 1701-21, the coasts of the Gulf of California, it was thought in Europe to have been for the first time discovered that California was a peninsula. But, in his Introduction Géographique, he observes, that in the sixteenth century no person in Mexico denied this fact; nor was it till the seventeenth century that the idea originated that California was an island. During the seventeenth century, the Dutch freebooters were amongst the most active and inveterate enemies of Spain in the New World; and having established themselves in the bay of Pichilingue, on the east coast of California, from which circumstance they received the name of “Pichilingues,” they caused great embarrassment to the Spanish viceroys from their proximity to the coasts of Mexico. To these adventurers the origin of the notion, that California was separated from the main land, has been referred by some authors; but Mr. Greenhow (p. 94) states, that it was to be traced to the captain of a Manilla ship, in 1620, who reported that the asserted river of D’Aguilar was the western mouth of a channel which separated the northern extremity of California from the main land. A survey of the lower part of the peninsula was executed by the Governor of Cinaloa, and the Jesuit Jacinto Cortes, in pursuance of the orders of the Duke of Escalona, who was Viceroy during 1610-42, about the very timewhen Fonte purported to have sailed. They did not, however, go to the head of the gulf; and Humboldt informs us, that, during the feeble reign of Charles II. of Spain, 1655-1700, several writers had begun to regard California as a cluster of large islands, under the name of “Islas Carolinas.” Thus we find in the maps of this period, in those for example of Sanson, Paris, 1650; of Du Val, geographer to the King of France, Abbeville, 1655; of Jenner, London, 1666; of De Wit, Amsterdam; of Vischer, Schenkius, Herman, Moll, and others, which are in the King’s Library at the British Museum, California is depicted as an island; and in Jenner’s Map, in which C. Blanco is the northernmost headland of California, there is this note:—“This California was in times past thought to have been a part of the continent, and so made in all maps; but, by further discoveries, was found to be an island, long 1700 leagues.”
On the other hand, the maps of the later part of the sixteenth, and the earlier part of the seventeenth centuries, such as those by Ortelius, the King of Spain’s geographer, published in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first edited in 1570, the two maps adopted by Hakluyt in the respective editions of his voyages, in 1589 and 1600, that of Le Clerc, 1602, of Hondius, which Purchas adopted in his Pilgrims, in 1625, of Speed, 1646, and that of Blaew in his Novus Atlas of 1648, agree in representing California as a peninsula. The single passage, therefore, in De Fonte’s account, in which he, being “then admiral of New Spain and Peru, and now prince (or rather president) of Chili, explicitly states that he despatched one of his vessels, under the command of Don Diego Pennelosa, the nephew of Don Luis de Haro,” then great minister of Spain, “to discover whether California was an island or not, for before it was not known whether it was an island or a peninsula,” seems to point at once to the European origin of the tale. Mr. Dalrymple, the well-known secretary of the British Admiralty at the time of the Nootka Sound controversy, who was distinguished as the author of many able works on maritime discoveries, considered the story to have been a jeu-d’esprit of Mr. James Petiver the naturalist, one of the contributors to the Monthly Miscellany, whose taste for such subjects was evinced by his collection of MS. extracts, since preserved in the British Museum, and whose talent for such kind of composition was shown by his Account of a Voyage to the Levant, published in the sameMiscellany. It is worthy of remark, that the tale of De Fuca and the letter of De Fonte, as they have derived their origin, so they have derived their support, from writers foreign to the nation in whose favour they set up the asserted discoveries, and from them alone. Maldonado, it is true, was a Spaniard, but he likewise has found defenders only amongst strangers, whilst in his own country his narrative has been condemned as an imposture by posterity equally as by his cotemporaries.
THE CONVENTION OF THE ESCURIAL.