History of Alameda County, California : including its geology, topography, soil, and productions, Part 7

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood
Number of Pages: 1206

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GEOGRAPHY, AREA, GEOLOGY, MINERALOGY, ETC.

"There is no alternative but to sit down, in hopes that the troop of naked fiends will soon cease from sheer exhaustion. Vain expectation ! The uproar but increases in fury, the fire waxes hotter and hotter, and they seem to be preparing for fresh exhibitions of their powers. The combat deepens. On ye brave! See that wild Indian, a newly-elected captain, as with glaring eyes, blazing face, and complex- ion like that of a boiled lobster, he tosses his arms wildly aloft as in pursuit of, imaginary devils, while rivers of perspiration roll down his naked frame. Was ever the human body thrown into such contortions before? Another effort of that kind and his whole vertebral column must certainly come down with a crash! Another such convulsion, and his limbs will surely be torn asunder, and the disjointed mem- bers fly to the four points of the compass! Can the human frame endure this much longer ? The heat is equal to that of a bake-oven ; temperature five hundred degrees Fahrenheit ! Pressure of steam one thousand pounds to the square inch! The reeking atmosphere has become almost palpable, and the victimized audience are absolutely gasping for life. Millions for a cubic inch of fresh air ! Worlds for a drop of fresh water to cool the parched tongue ! This is terrible. To meet one's fate among the white caps of the lake, in a swamped canoe, or to sink down on the bald mountain's brow, worn out by famine, fatigue, and exposure, were glorious ; but to die here, suffocating in a solution of human perspiration, carbonic acid gas and char- coal smoke, is horrible! The idea is absolutely appalling. But there is no avail- Assistance might as well be sought from a legion of unchained imps as from a troop of Indians maddened by excitement.

" Death shows his visage not more than five minutes distant. The fire glimmers away leagues off. The uproar dies in the subdued rumble of a remote cataract, and respiration becomes slower and more labored. The whole system is sinking into utter insensibility, and all hope of relief has departed, when suddenly, with a grand triumphal crash, similar to that with which the ghosts closed their orgies when they doused the lights and started in pursuit of Tam O'Shanter and his old gray mare, the uproar ceases, and the Indians vanish through an aperture opened for that pur- pose. The half-dead victims to their own curiosity dash through it like an arrow, and in a moment more are drawing in whole bucketfuls of the cold, frosty air, every inhalation of which cuts the lungs like a knife, and thrills the system like an electric shock. They are in time to see the Indians plunge headlong into the ice-cold water of a neighboring stream, and crawl out and sink down on the banks, utterly exhausted. This is the last act of the drama, the grand climax, and the fandango is over."

With the Indians of the Bay of San Francisco, the practice of burning their dead, with everything belonging to them, was universal, while those farther south buried theirs. Weird is this scene of incremation. Gathered in a circle around the funeral pyre are the friends and relatives of the deceased, howling in dismal discord ; as the flames extend, so increases their enthusiasm, until, in an ectasy of excitement, they leap, shriek, lacerate their bodies, and go so far as to tear a handful of the burning flesh from off the smouldering body, and devour it. As a badge of mourning they smeared their, faces with a compound of the ashes of the dead, and grease, where it was allowed to remain for Time to efface.

HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

As is natural to suppose, the theme which we now leave with the reader is endless, therefore we are unable to follow it out as it should be ; still, a work of the nature which we now offer is hardly the place to look for aught but a short notice of California's aboriginals. Where can such be better found than in the pages of the profound and elaborate work of Mr. Bancroft on the "Native Races of the Pacific States of North America " !

EARLY HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT.

THE EARLY HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT OF ALAMEDA COUNTY.

THE SPANISH-THE MEXICAN-THE AMERICAN PERIODS.

" Let us depart ! the universal sun Confines not to one land his blessed beams, Nor is man rooted, like a tree, whose seed The winds on some ungenial soil have cast There, where it cannot prosper."

T r HE history of any county of California follows so sequentially, and is so closely allied with the history of the Pacific Coast in general, and this State in particu- ular, that to commence the chronicling of events from the beginning naturally and properly takes us back to the first discoveries in this portion of the globe, made by the bold old voyageurs who left the known world and the charted seas behind them and sailed out into an unknown, untraversed, unmapped, and trackless main, whose mysteries were as great to them as those of that "undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns."

The Pacific Ocean was given to the world by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who looked down from the heights of Panama upon its placid bosom on the 25th day of September, 1513. In 1519 Mexico was conquered by Hernando Cortez, and sixteen years thereafter, in 1537, his pilot, Zimenez, discovered Lower California. In 1542, a voyage of discovery was made along the California coast by the famous Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, on the 5th of July of which year he landed at Cape St. Lucas, in Lower California, and following the coast he finally entered the delightful harbor of San Diego, in Upper California, September 28th. This place he named San Miguel, which was afterwards changed by Viscaiño to that which it now bears. Chief among these travelers, however, so far as the Pacific Coast is concerned, is indisputably Sir Francis Drake. Let it be our duty to see how this great navigator came to these parts and what he did.

Captain Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth, England, on the 13th day of December, A. D. 1577, for the South Sea Islands, having under his command five ves- sels, in size varying from fifteen to one hundred tons; in the largest, the Pelican, after- wards named the Golden Hind, he sailed himself, while the number of men in the whole fleet mustered only one hundred and sixty-six all told. On December 25, 1577, he sighted the coast of Barbary, and on the 29th the Cape de Verde Islands; thence sailing across the almost untraveled bosom of the broad Atlantic he made the coast of Brazil on the 5th of April, and entering the Rio de la Plata, parted com- pany with two of his vessels, which, however, he afterwards met, and taking from them their provisions and men, turned them adrift. On May the 29th he entered the port of St. Julian, where he lay for two months taking in stores and refitting; on the 20th of August, he entered the Straits of Magellan; September 25th he passed out of them, having with him only his own ship, and thus handed his name to posterity as

HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

the first Englishman to voyage through that bleak and tempestuous arm of the sea. On the 25th of November he arrived at Macao, which he had appointed as a place of rendezvous in the event of his ships being separated; but Captain Winter, his Vice- admiral, had repassed the straits and returned to England. Drake thence continued his voyage along the coast of Chili and Peru, taking all opportunities of seizing Spanish ships, and attacking them off shore, till his men were satiated with plunder. He now contemplated a return to England, but fearing the storm-lashed shores of Magellan and the possible presence of a Spanish fleet, he determined to search for a northern connection between the two vast oceans similar to that which he knew to exist in the southern extremity of the continent. He, therefore, sailed along the coast, upwards, in search of such a route. When he started the season was yet young, still the historian of the voyage says that on June 3, 1579, in latitude 42º, now the southern line of the State of Oregon, the crew complained bitterly of the cold, while the rigging of the ship was rigidly frozen; and again, in latitude 44°, "their hands were benumbed, and the meat was frozen when it was taken from the fire." With these adversities to contend against, it is no wonder that he resolved to enter the first advantageous anchorage he should find. On June 5th they sailed in shore and brought to in a harbor, which proving unadvantageous through dense fogs and dan- gerous rocks, he once more put to sea, steering southward for some indentation in the coast line where he would be safe. This they found on June 17, 1579, within 38° of the equator.

There would seem to have been a very different state of weather existing in those days from that prevalent in the same latitudes at the present time, and many attempts have been made to harmonize those statements with what is reasonable. First of all, the statements of this chronicler, although a clergyman, must be taken cum grano salis. He was sure that no one could dispute his statements, and he was loth, doubtless, to give this country, which Drake had named "New Albion," and had taken formal possession of in the name of Queen Elizabeth (in perpetual memory of which he erected a pillar and on it fixed a silver plate containing a likeness of Her Majesty, and the date-probably a redwood post with an English crown piece nailed fast to it-as an act of possession), the credit of having a climate that would more than vie with that of " Old Albion " on the other side of the world. Again it will be remembered that the northwest trade-winds which prevail along the coast are fully as searching and cold as the winter winds, and that to a crew of men just from under the scorching heat of a tropical sun it would prove doubly piercing. Again there is a legend among the old Indians along the coast that there was once a year when snow fell in mid-summer. It is just possible, therefore, that such a climatic somersault may have occurred, and the condition of the weather been as described by the Reverend Mr. Fletcher.

Be that as it may, the truth that Drake did effect a landing in a "fair and good " bay stands out boldly and unimpeachably, and to locate the place is now our task.

Authorities differ widely in regard to this matter, and thorough research fails to establish satisfactorily to all, the exact situation of that body of water visited by Sir Francis Drake. From time immemorial it was thought that the sheet of water which laves the western shore of Alameda County-the present Bay of San Francisco-

Jonas Cl. Sinifi

EARLY HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT.

must have been .the place, and all men of thirty years of age, and older, will remem- ber the statement in the old school history to the effect that the first white men to sail into the Bay of San Francisco were Sir Francis Drake and his crew. Franklin Tuthill, in his " History of California," maintains that ground, and says : "Its (San . Francisco Bay) latitude is 37° 59', to which that given by Drake's chronicler is quite as near as those early navigators, with their comparatively rude instruments, were likely to get. The cliffs about San Francisco are not remarkably white, even if one notable projection inside the gate is named 'Lime Point'; but there are many white mountains, both north and south of it, along the coast, and Drake named the whole land-not his landing place alone-New Albion. They did not go into ecstasies about the harbor-they were not hunting harbors, but fortunes in compact form. Harbors, so precious to the Spaniards, who had commerce in the Pacific to be pro- tected, were of small account to the roving Englishman. But the best possible testi-

mony he could bear as to the harbor's excellence were the thirty-six days he spent in it. The probabilities are, then, that it was in San Francisco Bay that Drake made himself at home. As Columbus, failing to give his name to the continent he dis- covered, was in some measure set right by the bestowal of his name upon the conti- nent's choicest part, when poetry dealt with the subject, so to Drake, cheated of the honor of naming the finest harbor on the coast, is still left a feeble memorial, in the name of a closely adjoining dent in the coast line. To the English, then, it may be believed belongs the credit of finding San Francisco Bay."

The question which has occupied historians for many years, and which has been asserted by them with didactic force, is that the inlet then visited by Drake is the Bay of San Francisco. This statement of the earlier historiographers was first refuted by the Baron von Humboldt, who maintained that the harbor then visited by Drake was called by the Spaniards " Puerto de Bodega," yet, how it could have borne this name then is hard to realize, seeing that it was not until nearly two centuries thereafter (in 1775) that the port was visited by Lieutenant Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who named the place after himself.

But why go searching up and down the coast trying to locate the place either in latitude 37° 59', or in 38° 10', when there is a bay which answers all the require- ments of the description given of it, located "within 38° towards the line?" In the bay which lies in the curve in the coast under the lee of Point Reyes, and which is marked on the modern maps as' Drake's Bay, is to be found that place. The latitude given by the United States Government for the light-house located on the extreme southwestern pitch of Point Reyes is 37° 59' 36", which corresponds with the figures taken from the log-book of the Golden Hind, to within sixteen seconds, which is quite close enough for a calculation made by "those early navigators with their comparatively rude instruments." But is it not reasonable to suppose that a man who had made the sea his profession during the major portion of his life, and was at present sailing where no man had ever sailed before, and who, at that time, had his head full of a project to circumnavigate the world, would be able to take an obser- vation and come within a small fraction of seconds of his exact latitude? It would appear to us to be presuming very much upon his ignorance to think otherwise.

Having established to our own mind, and we hope to the minds of our readers, the

HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

fact that there is a bay in the identical latitude named in Drake's chart as the place where he landed, let us look still further into the matter and see if facts can be adduced to farther substantiate the assertion that this bay fills all the requirements of the one described by Rev. Mr. Fletcher. First of all is an old Indian legend, which comes down through the Nicasios, to the effect that Drake did land at this place. Although they have been an interior tribe ever since the occupation by the Spaniards, and doubtless were at that time, it still stands to reason that they would know all about the matter. If the ship remained in the bay for thirty-six days, it is reasonable to suppose that a knowledge of its presence reached every tribe of In- dians within an area of one hundred miles, and that the major portion of them paid a visit to the bay to see the "envoys of the Great Spirit," as they regarded the white seamen. One of these Indians, named Theognis, who is reported to have been one hundred and thirty-five years old when he made the statement, says that Drake pre- sented the Indians with a dog, some young pigs, and seeds of several species of grain. Some biscuit were also given to them, which they planted, believing, in their simple ignorance, that they would spring to life and bear similar bread. The Indians also state that some of Drake's men deserted him here, and, making their way into the country, became amalgamated with the aboriginals to such an extent that all traces of them were lost, except possibly a few names which are to be found among the In- dians: "Winnemucca,' for instance, is a purely Celtic word, and the name " Nicasio," " Novato," and others are counterparts, with slight variations, of names of places in the island of Cyprus. There is also another tradition, which, if true, would put the matter of Drake's entrance into San Francisco Bay forever at rest, which is to the effect that at the time of his visit to this coast, the Golden Gate was closed with a wall of adamantine rock, and was only opened some years later by a mighty earth- quake. It is stated that the waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers passed to the ocean through the Pajaro Valley previous to this eruption. There is a bare possibility of this being true, and, if so, the oft-asked question, how could Drake sail so near to the great Golden Gate entrance and not discover it, is readily answered. Of course, all these traditions must be taken for what they are worth, but it does seem that they go to strengthen the idea that Drake landed at Point Reyes.

But there are facts which go to prove the case, other than mere Indian legends. Titus Fay Cronise, in his admirable work, entitled "The Natural Wealth of Cali- fornia," says : " It is clearly settled that the place where he (Drake) landed is near Point de los Reyes. The locality will probably ever be known hereafter as Drake's Bay. The most conclusive argument that could be advanced to prove that he did not discover the Bay of San Francisco is found in the name he gave the country- New Albion. There is nothing about the entrance to this bay to call up images of the 'white cliffs of old England,' so dear to the hearts of the mariners of that country. Its beetling rocks, which must have been additionally dark and dreary at the season of the year when the great navigator saw them-neither green with the verdure of spring, nor russet by the summer's heat ; while near Point de los Reyes there is suffi- cient whiteness about the cliffs which skirt the shore to attract attention, and as it is ' out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh,' the 'bold Briton,' longing for home, may have pictured to his 'mind's eye' some resemblance to old Albion.

EARLY HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT.

Besides, Drake lay thirty-six days at anchor, which it would have been impossible for so experienced a sailor to have done, had it been in our glorious bay, without being impressed with its importance as a harbor, on a coast so destitute of such advantages as this; but he makes no allusion to any feature traceable in our bay. He never had the honor of seeing it." In this connection it may be further stated that the headland forming the point is composed of granite, which may have presented, at that time, a white or greyish color, and this appearance is still perceptible at certain angles of the sun's rays. It is urged that the bay at Point Reyes would afford no shelter from a southeast storm, and hence could not be the " good harbor " spoken of by Drake's chronicler, but it must be remembered that he was there in the month of June, and that at that time of the year all the winds are from the northwest, and no more secure anchorage from winds from that direction can be found along the coast than is to be had under the lee of Punta de los Reyes.

Summed up, then, the matter stands as follows: Favoring the idea that Drake's and San Francisco Bay are one is a general, sweeping statement, based upon no proofs, and only attempted to be sustained by those who dislike to acknowledge that the best harbor along the whole coast line was the last one to be discovered, or who wish to give to England's navigator the honor of the discovery. On the other hand, pointing to what is now known as Drake's Bay as the place, stands, firstly, the indis- putable evidence of the log-book and chart made by Drake himself, which locates the place to within sixteen seconds, or within one-fourth of a mile ; secondly, the tra- ditions among the people that he met while here ; and, thirdly, all that can be said in favor of the Bay of San Francisco can be as justly and truthfully said of Drake's Bay, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude from the evidence adduced, that to the present Drake's Bay belongs the honor of being the one in which that famous navigator spent his time while ashore in California.

On the 22d of July, after having repaired his ship, and doubtless taken on board a goodly supply of fresh meat and water, Drake set sail for England, going by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and arriving in Plymouth, November 3, 1580, being gone about two years and ten months. He was the first Englishman who circumnavigated the globe, and was the first man who ever made the entire voyage in the same vessel. He was graciously received by the Queen (Elizabeth) and knighted. She also gave orders for the preservation of his ship, the Golden Hind, that it might remain a mon- ument to his own and his country's glory. At the end of a century it had to be broken up, owing to decay. Of the sound timber a chair was made, which was pre- sented by Charles II. to the University of Oxford. Sir Francis Drake died on board ship at Nombre de Dios, in the West Indies, January 28, 1595.

But there is a large amount of historical interest attached to this bay aside from the fact that it was the locale of Drake's sojourn. In 1595, Sebastian Cermenon, while on a voyage from Manilla to Acapulco, was wrecked near Punta de los Reyes. This was doubtless the first shipwreck which ever occurred on the coast of Cali- fornia. Nothing is known of the fate of the crew, but evidently they, or a portion of them at least, reached Acapulco, or some other Spanish sea-port, and reported the wreck. In 1602, General Sebastian Viscaiño, under orders from Philip III. of Spain, made an exploration of the coast of Upper California, in the course of which

HISTORY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

he discovered the harbor of San Diego, on the 10th of November. After remaining a few days he proceeded to the north, and on December 16th discovered the Bay of Monterey, which he named in honor of Gaspar de Zuniga, Count de Monte Rey, the then Viceroy of Mexico. It was at first called the Port of Pines. We now come to a very peculiar entry in his diary, or log-book, which is as follows: "In twelve days after leaving Monterey, a favorable wind carried the ship past the port of San Fran- cisco, but she afterwards put back into the port of San Francisco." At a first glance this would seem to point to the present bay of that name, and would appear to rob Governor Portala and his band of adventurers of the honor of either discovering or naming the bay; and instead of its being named after the Jesuit patron saint in 1769, it was known by that name more than a century and a half previous. But let us peruse this diary still further. Taking up the thread where it was dropped above, it states : "She anchored, January 7, 1603, behind a point of land called Punta de los Reyes, where there was a wreck." This, then; establishes the exact location of the "port of San Francisco" mentioned above, which is the same as that of the present Drake's Bay, and was, doubtless, one and the same, for the wreck which he saw could have been none other than that of the ship lost by Sebastian Cermenon in 1595, "near Punta de los Reyes." But there is still other evidence that Drake's Bay and the "port of San Francisco " are the same. A map was published in Europe in 1545, three years after the voyage of Rodriguez Cabrillo, in which a San Francisco Bay is mentioned, and also the Farralones, which islands were named by Cabrillo after his pilot, Farralo. Now, it is well known that this famous navigator did not enter the the present Bay of San Francisco ; therefore, if the Bay of San Francisco and the Farralones are marked on this map as conterminous, it is more than reasonable to con- clude that the bay referred to is none other than the present Drake's Bay, which opens out directly towards the Farralones, and it is quite probable that Cabrillo himself gave the name of San Francisco to it. There is also a " Pacific Coast Pilot " extant, writ- ten by Admiral José Gonzales Cabrera Bruno, and published in Manilla in 1734, which contains instructions to navigators for reaching the "Punta de los Reyes, and entering the port of San Francisco." This would go to show that the two places were contiguous, and it is more than likely that these "instructions " were compiled from the map mentioned above and similar ones, on all of which the port of San Francisco was marked, "behind a point of land called Punta de los Reyes." It may be further stated that the Russian navigators recognized the "port of San Francisco " to be separate and distinct from the present Bay of San Francisco ; for, when, in 1812, Baranoff, chief agent of the Russian-American Fur Company, asked permission from the Governor of California to erect a few houses and leave a few men at Bodega Bay, he designated that place as "a little north of the port of San Francisco." The Bay of San Francisco had been visited before that by the Russians and was known to be nearly sixty miles from Bodega Bay ; hence, we must conclude that they recognized some place quite near to the latter as the "port of San Francisco," which place could be none other than that laid down in the charts spoken of above, which has been proven conclusively to be the Drake's Bay of to-day.

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History of Alameda County, California : including its geology, topography, soil, and productions, Part 7

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood Number of Pages: 1206

Author: Munro-Fraser, J. P
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Oakland, Calif. : M.W. Wood
Number of Pages: 1206