USA > California > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 11
USA > Oregon > The history of Oregon and California & the other territories of the northwest coast of North America > Part 11
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85
STORY OF THE VOYAGE OF FONTE.
1640.]
to the North Pacific, for the purpose of exploring its American coasts, and of intercepting certain vessels which were reported to have been equipped at Boston, in New England, in search of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. From Callao he proceeded to Cape San Lucas, where he detached a vessel to explore the Californian Gulf ; thence, continuing his voyage along the west coast, he passed about two hundred and sixty leagues, in crooked channels, among a collection of islands called by him the Archipelago of St. Lazarus ; and beyond them he found, under the 53d degree of latitude, the mouth of a great river, which he named Rio de los Reyes - River of Kings. Having despatched his lieutenant, Bernardo, with one vessel, to trace the coast on the Pacific farther north, he entered the great river, and ascended it north-eastward, to a large lake, called, from the beauty of its shores, Lake Belle, containing many islands, and surrounded by a fine country, the inhabitants of which were kind and hospitable. On the south shore of the lake was the large town of Conasset, where the admiral left his vessels ; thence he proceeded, (in what manner he does not say,) with some of his men, down a river called the Parmentier, flowing from Lake Belle eastward into another lake, to which he gave his own name, and thence, through a passage called the Strait of Ronquillo, in honor of one of his captains, to the sea.
On entering the sea, the admiral learned, from some Indians, " that, a little way off, lay a great ship, where there had never been one before ; " and, on boarding her, he found only an old man and a youth, who told him that they came from the town called Boston, in New England. On the following day, the captain, named Nicholas Shapley, arrived, with the owner of the ship, Seymour Gibbons, "a fine gentleman, and major-general of the largest colony in New England, called Maltechusetts," between whom and the admiral a struggle of courtesy was begun. The Spanish com- mander had been ordered to make prize of any people seeking for a north-west or a west passage; but he would look on the Bosto- nians as merchants, trading for skins; so he made magnificent presents to them all, and, having received, in return, their charts and journals, he went back to his ships, in Lake Belle, and thence, down the Rio de los Reyes, to the sea.
In the mean time, the lieutenant, Bernardo, had ascended another river, called, by him, Rio de Haro, into a lake named Lake Velasco, situated under the 61st degree of latitude, from which he went, in
86
VOYAGE OF JUAN DE FUCA.
[1592
canoes, as far as the 79th degree, where the land was seen, "still trending north, and the ice rested on the land." He was also as- sured " that there was no communication out of the Atlantic Sea by Davis's Strait ; for the natives had conducted one of his seamen to the head of Davis's Strait, which terminated in a fresh lake, of about thirty miles in circumference, in the 80th degree of north latitude ; and there were prodigious mountains north of it." These accounts, added to his own observations, led Admiral Fonte to conclude " that there was no passage into the South Sea by what they call the north- west passage ; " and he accordingly returned, with his vessels, through the Pacific, to Peru.
Such are the principal circumstances related in the account of Admiral Fonté's voyage, which was, for some time after its appear- ance, received as true, and copied into all works on Northern America. In 1750, a French translation of the account, with a chart drawn from it, and a memoir, in support of its correctness, were presented to the Academy of Sciences of Paris by Messrs. Delisle and Buache, in consequence of which, the various Spanish repositories of papers respecting America were carefully examined, in search of information on the subject ; and, in all the voyages of discovery along the north-west coasts of the continent, during the last century, endeavors were made to discover the mouth of the Rio de los Reyes. These labors, however, were vain. The exist- ence of a number of islands near the position assigned to the Archipelago of St. Lazarus, and of a large river, (the Stikine,) entering the ocean near the 56th parallel, indeed, seems to favor the supposition that some voyage, of which we have no record, may have been made to that part of the Pacific before 1708; but the rivers and lakes through which Fonte was said to have passed - his town of Conasset -and his Boston ship-are now generally believed to have all emanated from the brain of James Petiver, a naturalist of some eminence, and one of the chief contributors to the Monthly Miscellany.
The account of the voyage and discoveries of Juan de Fuca, on the north-western side of America, in 1592, was, for a long time, considered as less worthy of credit than those above noticed. More recent examinations in that part of the world have, however, caused it to be removed from the class of fictions ; although it is certainly erroneous as regards the principal circumstance related. All the information respecting this voyage is derived from "A Note made by Michael Lock, the elder, touching the Strait of Sea commonly called
87
VOYAGE OF JUAN DE FUCA.
1592.]
Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the North-west Passage of Meta Incognita" - published in 1625, in the celebrated historical and geographical collection called The Pilgrims, by Samuel Purchas .*
Mr. Lock there relates that he met, at Venice, in April, 1596, "an old man, about sixty years of age, called, commonly, Juan de Fuca, but named, properly, Apostolos Valerianos, of nation a Greek, born in Cephalonia, of profession a mariner, and an ancient pilot of ships," who, "in long talks and conferences," declared that he had been in the naval service of Spain, in the West Indies, forty years, and that he was one of the crew of the galleon Santa Anna, when she was taken by Cavendish, near Cape San Lucas, in 1587, on which occasion " he had lost sixty thousand ducats of his own goods." After his return to Mexico, he was despatched, by the viceroy, with three vessels, " to discover the Strait of Anian, along the coast of the South Sea, and to fortify that strait, to resist the passage and proceeding of the English nation, which were feared to pass through that strait into the South Sea." This expedition, however, proving abortive, he was again sent, in 1592, with a small caravel, for the same purpose, in which "he followed his course west and north-west," along the coasts of Mexico and California, " until he came to the latitude of 47 degrees ; and, there finding that the land trended north and north-east, with a broad inlet of sea, between 47 and 48 degrees of latitude, he entered thereinto, sailing therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime 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 he passed by divers islands in that sailing ; and, at the entrance of this said strait, there is, on the north-west coast thereof, a great head-land or island, with an exceeding high pinna- cle, or spired rock, like a pillar thereupon. *
* Being entered thus far into the said strait, and being come into the North Sea already, and finding the sea wide enough every where, and to be about thirty or forty leagues wide in the mouth of the straits, where he entered, he thought 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 to Acapulco."
The Greek went on to say that, upon his arrival in Mexico, the vice-
* The whole note will be found among the Proofs and Illustrations, in the latter part of this volume, under the letter A.
88
VOYAGE OF JUAN DE FUCA.
[1592.
roy had welcomed him, and promised him a great reward ; but that, after waiting in vain for two years, he had stole away to Europe, and, " understanding the noble mind of the queen of England, and of her wars against the Spaniards, and hoping that her majesty would do him justice for his goods lost by 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' burden, and a pinnace ; and that he would perform it in thirty days' time, from one end to the other of the strait." Mr. Lock says that, on receiving this account, he endeavored to interest Sir Walter Raleigh, and other eminent persons in England, in behalf of the Greek pilot, and to have him employed on a voyage such as he proposed to undertake ; but he was unable to do so, and, by the last accounts, the old man was dying in Cephalonia, in 1602.
These are the most material circumstances respecting Juan de Fuca and his voyage, as related by Mr. Lock, who was an intelli- gent and respectable merchant engaged in the Levant trade .* Other English writers, of the same time, allude to the subject ; but they afford no additional particulars, nor has any thing been since learned, calculated to prove directly even that such a person as Juan de Fuca ever existed. On the contrary, the author of the Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, who loses no opportunity to exalt the merits of his countrymen as discoverers, after examining many papers in the archives of the Indies, relating to the period given as the date of the voyage, pronounces the whole to be a fabrication. The account attracted little attention in Eng- land, and was almost unknown, out of that kingdom, until after the publication of the journals of the last expedition of Cook, who conceived that he had, by his examinations on the north-western coasts of America, ascertained its falsehood. More recent exami- nations in that quarter have, however, served to establish a strong presumption in favor of its authenticity and general correctness, so far as the supposed narrator could himself have known ; for they show that the geographical descriptions contained in it are as nearly conformable with the truth, as those of any other account of a voyage written in the early part of the seventeenth century.
Thus Juan de Fuca says that, between the 47th and 48th
* He was, for some time, the English consul at Aleppo, and was an intimate friend of Hakluyt, for whom he translated the Decades of Pedro Martir, and furnished other papers published by that collector.
89
CONFIRMATION OF FUCA'S ACCOUNT.
1595.]
degrees of latitude, he entered a broad inlet of sea, in which he sailed for twenty days, and found the land trending north-west, and north-east, and north, and east, and south-east, and that, in this course, he passed numerous islands. Now, the fact is, that, between the 48th and 49th degrees, a broad inlet of sea does extend from the Pacific, eastward, apparently penetrating the American conti- nent to the distance of more than one hundred miles, after which it turns north-westward, and, continuing in that direction about two hundred and fifty miles farther, it again joins the Pacific Ocean. The differences as to the position and course of the inlet, between the two descriptions here compared, are few and slight, and are certainly all within the limits of supposable error on the part of the Greek, especially considering his advanced age, and the circum- stance that he spoke only from recollection ; while, on the other hand, the coincidences are too strong to be attributable only to chance. The pilot, indeed, asserts that through this inlet he sailed - to the Atlantic, but he does not pretend that he reached any known coast, or previously-determined point of that ocean ; so that he is liable only to the charge of having made an erroncous estimate of the extent and value of his discovery, which he might well have done, without any intention to deceive, as the breadth of the North American continent was then unknown.
Some false reports, such as those above mentioned, respecting the discovery of a northern passage between the two oceans, and the existence of rich nations in its vicinity, together with a desire to lessen the dangers of the navigation along the western side of California, by providing the ships in the Philippine trade with proper descriptions of the coasts, induced King Philip II. of Spain, in 1595, to order that measures should be taken for a complete survey of it .* There were, also, other reasons for examining that part of
* " His majesty knew that the viceroys of Mexico had endeavored to discover a northern passage; and he had found, among his father's papers, a declaration of certain strangers, to the effect that they had been driven, by violent winds, from the codfish coast, [about Newfoundland,] on the Atlantic, to the South Sea, through the Strait of Anian, which is beyond Cape Mendocino, and had, on their way, seen a rich and populous city, well fortified, and inhabited by a numerous and civilized nation, who had treated them well; as also many other things worthy to be seen and known. His majesty had also been informed that ships, sailing from China to Mex- ico, ran great risks, particularly near Cape Mendocino, where the storms are most violent, and that it would be advantageous to have that coast surveyed thence to Acapulco, so that the ships, mostly belonging to his majesty, should find places for relief and refreshment when needed." Whereupon, his majesty ordered the count de Monterey, viceroy of Mexico, to have those coasts surveyed, at his own expense, with all care and diligence, &c. - Torquemada, vol. i. p. 693.
12
90
FIRST VOYAGE OF VIZCAINO.
[1596.
the continent, as the Spaniards were then engaged in the settlement of New Mexico, or the country traversed by the River Bravo del Norte, in which their colonies extended nearly to the 40th degree of latitude; and they had no clear idea of the distance between that region and the Pacific.
The count de Monterey, viceroy of Mexico, in consequence, despatched three vessels from Acapulco, in the spring of 1596, under the command of Sebastian Vizcaino, a distinguished officer, who had been in the ship Santa Anna, when she was taken and burnt by Cavendish, off Cape San Lucas. Nothing, however, was gained by this expedition. For reasons of which we are not informed by the Spanish historians, Vizcaino did not proceed beyond the Californian Gulf, on the shores of which he endeavored to plant colonies, first at a place called St. Sebastian, and after- wards at La Paz, or Santa Cruz, where Cortes had made a similar attempt sixty years before : but both these places were soon aban- doned, on account of the sterility of the surrounding country, and the ferocity of the natives ; and Vizcaino returned to Mexico before the end of the year .*
The viceroy had most probably hoped, by means of this voyage, to escape the infliction of the heavy expenses of an expedition such as that which he was enjoined to make by the royal decree ; but King Philip II. died in 1598, and one of the first acts of the reign of his successor, Philip III., was a peremptory order for the immediate despatch of a squadron from Mexico, to complete the survey of the west coasts of the continent, agreeably to the previous instructions. The viceroy thereupon commenced preparations for the purpose on an extended scale of equipment. Two large ships and a fragata, or small vessel, were provided at Acapulco, and furnished with all the requisites for a long voyage of discovery ; and, in addition to their regular crews, a number of pilots, draughtsmen, and educated priests, were engaged, forming together, says the
* This expedition is thus noticed by Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 522: -
" We have seen a letter written the 8th of October, 1597, at a town called Puebla de los Angeles, eighteen leagues from Mexico, making mention of the islands of Cal- ifornia, situated two or three hundred leagues from the main land of New Spain, in the South Sea, as that thither have been sent, before that time, some people to con- quer them, which, with loss of some twenty men, were forced back, after that they had well visited, and found those islands or countries to be very rich of gold and silver mines, and of very fair Oriental pearls, which were caught, in good quantity, upon one fathom and a half, passing, in beauty, the pearls of Margarita. The report thereof caused the viceroy of Mexico to send a citizen of Mexico, with two hundred men, to conquer the same."
91
SECOND VOYAGE OF VIZCAINO.
1602.]
historian Torquemada, " the most enlightened corps ever raised in New Spain." The direction of the whole expedition was intrusted to Sebastian Vizcaino, as captain-general, who sailed in the largest ship ; the other being commanded by Toribio Gomez de Corvan, as admiral -an office equivalent in rank to that of vice-admiral in the British service: the fragata was under ensign Martin de Aguilar .*
All things being prepared, the vessels took their departure from Acapulco on the 5th of May, 1602, and, after many troubles and delays at various places on the Mexican coast, they were assembled in the small Bay of San Bernabé, now called Port San José, imme- diately east of Cape San Lucas, the southern extremity of the Californian peninsula. There they remained until the 5th of July, when they rounded the cape, and the survey of the west coast was commenced from that point. The prosecution of the enterprise was thenceforward attended by constant difficulties : the scurvy, as usual, soon broke out among the crews; and the Spaniards had their courage and perseverance severely tried by their "chief enemy, the north-west wind," which was raised up, says Torque- mada, " by the foe of the human race, in order to prevent the advance of the ships, and to delay the discovery of those countries, and the conversion of their inhabitants to the Catholic faith."
Vizcaino and his followers, however, bore up nobly against all these obstacles, and executed the duty confided to them most faithfully. Proceeding slowly northward, they reached the exten- sive Bay of La Magdalena, between the 24th and 25th parallels of latitude, of which Vizcaino's survey was, until recently, the only one upon record ; and before the end of August, the vessels which had been separated almost ever since quitting Cape San Lucas, were again united in a harbor in the island called Isla de Cedros, or Isle of Cedars, by Cabrillo, but now generally known as Isla de Cerros, or Isle of Mountains. Continuing their examination, they found a bay near the 31st degree of latitude, which they named the Port of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, now called Port San Quintin, and said to be an excellent harbor ; and farther north they entered the Port San Miguel of Cabrillo, to which they assigned the appella-
* Torquemada, vol. i. p. 694. - Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, p. 60. - Torquemada's accounts are derived chiefly from the Journal of Fray An- tonio de la Asencion, the chaplain of one of the ships. The author of the Introduc- tion, &c., had recourse to the original notes of the expedition, from which he con- structed a chart of the coast surveyed.
92
VIZCAINO REACHES MONTEREY.
[1603.
tion of Port San Diego. There Vizcaino received accounts, from the natives, of people residing in the interior, who had beards, wore clothes, and dwelt in cities; but he could learn no further particulars, and was, upon the whole, inclined to believe that, unless the Indians were deceiving him, these people must be the Spaniards recently settled in New Mexico, on the River Bravo del Norte.
Having minutely surveyed Port San Diego, the Spaniards quitted it on the 1st of December, and sailed through the Archipelago of Santa Barbara, in one of the islands of which Cabrillo died sixty years previous ; then doubling the Cape de Galera of that navigator, to which they gave the name of Cape Conception, now borne by it, they anchored, in the middle of the month, in a spacious and secure harbor, near the 37th parallel, where they remained some time, engaged in refitting their vessels and obtaining a supply of water. This harbor - the Port of Pines of Cabrillo - was named Port Monterey by Vizcaino, in honor of the viceroy of Mexico; and as, before reaching it, sixteen of the crews of the vessels had died, and many of the others were incapable of duty from disease, it was determined that Corvan, the admiral, should return to Mexico in his ship, carrying the invalids, with letters to the viceroy, urging the immediate establishment of colonies and garrisons at San Diego and Monterey. Corvan, accordingly, on the 29th, sailed for Acapulco, where he arrived after a long and perilous voyage, with but few of his men alive; whilst Vizcaino, with his ship and the fragata, prosecuted their exploration along the coast towards the north.
On the 3d of January, 1603, after the departure of Corvan, Vizcaino, accompanied by the small vessel under Aguilar, quitted Monterey ; but, ere proceeding much farther north, they were driven back by a severe gale, in the course of which the two vessels were separated. The ship took refuge in the Bay of San Francisco, which seems to have been then well known ; and search was made for the wreck of the San Augustin, which had been there lost, as already mentioned, in 1595, during her voyage from the Philippine Islands to Acapulco. Finding no traces of that vessel, Vizcaino again put to sea ; and, passing a promontory, which he sup- posed to be Cape Mendocino, he, on the 20th of January, reached a high, white bluff, in latitude, as ascertained by solar observation, of 42 degrees, which, in honor of the saint of that day, was named Cape San Sebastian. By this time, few of his men were fit for
93
VIZCAINO RETURNS TO MEXICO.
1603.]
service ; the weather was stormy, the cold was severe, the pro- visions were nearly exhausted; and, as the small vessel did not appear, the commander, with the assent of his officers, resolved to direct his course towards Mexico. He did so, and arrived at Acapulco on the 21st of March.
The fragata, or small vessel, also reached Mexico about the same tinie, having, however, lost, by sickness, her commander, Martin de Aguilar, her pilot, Flores, and the greater part of her crew. Tor- quemada's account of her voyage, after parting with Vizcaino's ship, is short, and by no means clear ; but the circumstances therein related have attracted so much attention, that a translation of it should be here presented. The historian says, -
"The fragata parted from the capitana, [Vizcaino's ship,] and, supposing that she had gone onward, sailed in pursuit of her. Being in the latitude of 41 degrees, the wind began to blow from the south-west; and the fragata, being unable to withstand the waves on her beam, ran before the wind, until she found shelter under the land, and anchored near Cape Mendocino, behind a great rock, where she remained until the gale had passed over. When the wind had become less violent, they continued their voyage close along the shore ; and, on the 19th of January, the pilot, Antonio Flores, found that they were in the latitude of 43 degrees, where the land formed a cape or point, which was named Cape Blanco. From that point, the coast begins to turn to the north-west; and near it was discovered a rapid and abundant river, with ash-trees, willows, brambles, and other trees of Castile, on its banks, which they endeavored to enter, but could not, from the force of the current. Ensign Martin de Aguilar, the commander, and Antonio Flores, the pilot, seeing that they had already reached a higher latitude than had been ordered by the viceroy, in his instructions, that the capitana did not appear, and that the number of the sick was great, agreed to return to Acapulco; and they did so, as I shall hereafter show. It is supposed that this river is the one leading to a great city, which was discovered by the Dutch when they were driven thither by storms, and that it is the Strait of Anian, through which the ship passed, in sailing from the North Sea to the South Sea; and that the city called Quivira is in those parts ; and that this is the region referred to in the account which his majesty read, and which induced him to order this expedition."
This account of the discovery of a great river, near the 43d
94
SUPPOSED RIVER OF AGUILAR.
[1603.
degree of latitude, was, for a long time, universally credited, and excited many speculations. The supposed river was first, as Tor- quemada says, generally believed to be the long-sought Strait of Anian. It was then, upon the strength of a statement made by the captain of a Manilla ship, in 1620, universally considered as the western mouth of a passage, or channel, connecting the ocean with the northern extremity of the Californian Gulf ; and, accordingly, during the remainder of the seventeenth century, California was represented, on all maps, as an island, of which Cape Blanco was the northern end. When this error had been corrected, the exist- ence of a great river, flowing from the centre of America into the Pacific, under the 43d parallel, was again affirmed by some geogra- phers ; while others again placed at this point the western entrance of a passage leading to the Atlantic.
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