SUPPLEMENTARY LIST

Almadén (mine, mineral), a word of Moorish origin. New Álmadén, in Santa Clara County, where there is a quicksilver mine, is named after the famous Almadén quicksilver mines of Spain.

Alviso (a surname). Alviso is in Santa Clara County, eight miles northwest of San José, and received its name from Ignacio Alviso, a native of Sonora, born in 1772, who was a member of Anza’s party of colonists in 1775-6. He was the original Alviso of California, and was the grantee of Rincón de los Esteros Rancho.

Arroyo Hondo (deep creek).

Coyote, the native wolf of California. Coyote is an Aztec word, originally coyotl. The town of this name is situated thirteen miles southeast of San José.

Las Llagas (the wounds or stigmata of St. Francis),—in reference to the legend that St. Francis was supposed to have received, after a fast of fifty days, the miraculous imprint of the wounds of the Savior in his hands, feet and side. Las Llagas was the name of a place near Gilroy, and was also given by the padres to Alameda Creek.

Madroño, often misspelled madrone, is the name given by the Spaniards to a very beautiful tree indigenous to California, which is thus described by Fremont in his Memoirs: “Another remarkable tree of these woods is called in the language of the country Madroña. It is a beautiful evergreen, with large, thick and glossy digitated leaves; the trunk and branches reddish-colored, and having a smooth and singularly naked appearance, as if the bark had been stripped off. In its green state the wood is brittle, very heavy, hard and close-grained; it is said to assume a red color when dry, sometimes variegated, and susceptible of a high polish. Some measured nearly four feet in diameter, and were about sixty feet high.”

Milpitas, see page [232].

San Felipe (St. Philip), is the name of a village in Santa Clara County. There were four saints of this name, perhaps the most distinguished being St. Philip Neri, a Florentine, born in 1515. He was the intimate friend of St. Charles Borroméo, patron of the mission at Monterey, and was the founder of the order of the Oratorians, “who were bound by no vows, and were not secluded from the world, but went about reading and praying with the sick and needy, founding and visiting hospitals and doing various charities.” Then there was St. Philip of Bethsaida, who, going to Hieropolis, “found the people worshipping a huge serpent, or dragon, which they thought to be a personification of Mars. Then Philip took pity on their ignorance. He held up the cross and commanded the serpent to disappear. Immediately it glided from beneath the altar, and as it moved it sent forth so dreadful an odor that many died, and among them the son of the King; but Philip restored him to life. Then the priests of the serpent were so wroth with the apostle that they crucified him, and when he was fastened to the cross they stoned him.”—(Stories of the Saints.)

San Martín (St. Martin), is a town in Santa Clara County, six miles north of Gilroy. St. Martin has many legends connected with his history. Before he became a Christian, he was a soldier and was noted for his kindness and charity to his comrades. “The winter of 332 was so severely cold that large numbers perished in the streets of Amiens, where the regiment of St. Martin was quartered. One day he met at the gate a naked man, and taking pity on him, he divided his cloak, for it was all he had, and gave half to the beggar. That night in a dream Jesus stood before him, and on his shoulders he wore the half of the cloak that Martin had given the beggar. And he said to the angels who attended him, ‘Know ye who hath thus arrayed me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptized, hath done this.’ Then Martin was immediately baptized.” Again it is told of him that being invited to sup with the emperor, “the cup was passed to Martin, before his Majesty drank, with the expectation that he would touch it to his lips, as was the custom. But a poor priest stood behind Martin, and to the surprise and admiration of all, the saint presented the full goblet to him, thus signifying that a servant of God deserved more honor, however humble his station, than any merely earthly potentate; from this legend he has been chosen the patron of all innocent conviviality.”—(Stories of the Saints.)

IX
AROUND SAN FRANCISCO BAY

San Francisco. Many persons, misled by an incorrect translation of a certain passage in Palou’s Life of Serra, have ascribed the naming of the bay of San Francisco (St. Francis), to the Portolá expedition of 1769, but, as a matter of fact, the outer bay, the great indentation in the coast outside of the Golden Gate, between Point Reyes and Mussel Point, had received this name many years before. In remonstrating with the Visitador General because no mission had been provided for St. Francis in Upper California, Serra remarked, “And is there no mission for our Father St. Francis?” Señor Galvez replied, “Si San Francisco quiere misión, que haga se halla su puerto y se le pondrá (If St. Francis wants a mission, let him cause his port to be found and one will be placed there for him).” By “his port” Galvez referred to a port already discovered and named, but which had been lost sight of during the intervening years, and which he wished to have re-discovered. This is further carried out by the succeeding statements of Palou, in which he says that after failing to recognize the port of Monterey, “they came to the port of St. Francis, our father, and they all knew it immediately by the agreement of the descriptions which they carried,” referring to descriptions obtained from the papers of the first discoverers. Father Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, says: “All the descriptions which we found here we read in the log-book of the pilot Cabrera Bueno, in order to form a judgment that this is the port of San Francisco. To make it all clear, the Señor Commandante ordered that during the day Sergeant Ortega should go out with a party of soldiers to explore.” Further on in the same diary we read: “From the top of a hill we made out the great estuary, or arm of the sea, which probably has a width of four or five leagues.” This is undoubtedly the first occasion when the eye of a white man rested upon “the great arm of the sea,” that is, the inner harbor of San Francisco as we now know it.

THE CITY OF YERBA BUENA (SAN FRANCISCO IN 1846-47)

“ ... so-called in reference to the profuse growth of that charming little vine about the locality.”

It must be remembered that until the arrival of Portolá, the Spaniards only knew this part of the coast from the sea side, having no knowledge of that great inland sea known to us as the bay of San Francisco. When the party came up by land on their futile search for Monterey, they reached Fort Point, and there recognized the marks of the outer bay as given by early navigators and called by them San Francisco. Then they climbed a hill, and looking to the landward saw the “great arm of the sea,” the inner harbor, to which the name of San Francisco was finally extended.

Palou ascribed the failure of the party to recognize the port of Monterey, and the consequent continuance of their journey as far as San Francisco, to a direct interposition of the divine hand, so that Galvez’s promise of a mission for St. Francis might be carried out.

The honor of the christening of our world-famous bay probably belongs to Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeñón, a Portuguese navigator, who was commissioned in the year 1595 by Philip II to search for safe harbors along the coast for vessels in the Philippine trade. These ships usually shaped their return course so as to touch first at about the latitude of Cape Mendocino, making a knowledge of the harbors south of that point a matter of great importance, especially in stormy weather. Cermeñón had the misfortune to lose his vessel, the San Agustín, on Point Reyes, and was compelled to make his way home, with great peril and suffering, in a small boat. In his Derrotero y Relación (Itinerary and Narrative), under date of April 24, 1596, he says: “We sighted New Spain at Cape Mendocino on November 4, 1595.... We left the bay and port of San Francisco, which is called by another name, a large bay, in 38⅔ degrees, and the islets [Farallones] in the mouth are in 38½ degrees, the distance between the two points of the bay being twenty-five leagues.” It is clear from this description that he referred to that great indentation in the coast between Point Reyes and one of the points to the south, possibly Mussel Point, and that he gave the name of San Francisco to it, displacing some other name by which it had been previously known. At any rate, if this is not the origin, it is likely to remain lost in the mists of the Pacific. Bancroft says: “There can be little doubt that Cermeñón named the port of his disaster San Francisco.”

An absurd theory advanced by certain persons that the name was derived from that of Sir Francis Drake is wholly unworthy of consideration. The resemblance between the two names must be regarded as purely a co-incidence, and any connection between “El Pirata” (the pirate) Drake, as the Spaniards usually called him, and the name of the gentle St. Francis must be taken in the light of a jest.

Portolá, then, although he was indubitably the discoverer of the bay as we know it,—the inner harbor,—found the name already applied to the outer ensenada by his predecessor, Cermeñón.

It is held by some persons that Portolá cannot in all fairness be considered the actual discoverer of the bay, since it is most probable that Lieutenant Ortega or perhaps some member of a hunting party which was sent out actually laid physical eyes upon it first, and it is even thought possible that Portolá never saw it at all, but remained in camp all the time during their stay on its shores. Even granting these facts, the question remains whether he, as the commander of the party making the expedition which resulted in the discovery, is not still entitled to the fame which has generally been granted to him.

A parallel might be drawn between the case of Portolá and that of Columbus. When the famous expedition of 1492 drew near to the shores of the new world, it was not the great admiral, but a common sailor, Rodrigo de Triana by name, who first raised the thrilling cry of “land! land!”; yet, nevertheless, the world justly awards the honor and glory of the discovery to Christopher Columbus, the leader and the soul of the party, whose splendid imagination and unconquerable resolution made it possible.

Although the Portolá party made a partial examination at this time of the shores of what they called the “great arm of the sea,” and Captain Fages returned for further explorations in 1770, and again in 1772, when he stood on the present site of Berkeley and looked out through the Golden Gate, the mission was not established until 1776. Father Palou was its founder, and he states in his Life of Serra that the presidio was established with solemn religious services, September 17, 1776, on the day of the “impressions of the stigmata of St. Francis,” but on account of a delay in receiving orders, the founding of the mission did not take place until October 9. On that day a procession was held with the image of St. Francis, and mass was celebrated by Father Palou himself.

So they prayed and sang their hymns, in the year of ’76, while their hearts beat high with the zeal of the missionary, and, happily, no echo of the roll of drums and boom of minute guns came to them across the untrodden miles of mountain and plain, of forest and prairie, that separated them from the alien race on the other rim of the continent, for whom they were all unconsciously preparing the way to the possession of a great principality.

No natives were present at this mass, for the reason that in the month of August they had been driven on their tule rafts to the islands of the bay and the opposite shores, by their enemies, the Salsonas, who lived about seven leagues to the southeast, and who had set fire to their rancherías and killed and wounded many of their people, the Spaniards not being able to prevent it.

The first settlement was three-fold, including the mission of San Francisco de Asís, on the Laguna de los Dolores (the lagoon of sorrows), the presidio, and the pueblo, separated from one another by about a league. The Pueblo was at first known as Yerba Buena, in reference to the profuse growth of that vine about the locality. The change of the name is ascribed by General Sherman, in his Memoirs, to jealousy of the town of Benicia, which was at first called Francisca, in honor of General Vallejo’s wife, and was thought to bear too marked a resemblance to the name of the great patron, San Francisco. General Vallejo himself states that the change was made as a matter of convenience, to bring the three points of the triangle, church, town, and presidio, all under one name. Whatever the reason for the change, it is a matter of congratulation that it occurred, for the name of the venerable saint carries a dignity more commensurate to a noble city than the poetic, but less impressive Yerba Buena.

MISSION OF SAN FRANCISCO DE ASÍS, COMMONLY CALLED MISSION DOLORES.

“It stood unharmed through the earthquake and fire of 1906 which laid low all its proud modern neighbors.”

The church of San Francisco de Asís, popularly known as Mission Dolores, still stands in a good state of preservation, having almost miraculously withstood the earthquake and fire of 1906, which laid low all its proud modern neighbors. Of its patron, the gentle St. Francis, it may be said that he was the son of a rich merchant, but that he abandoned his riches, adopted vows of poverty, and founded the order of Franciscans. “While in a trance, or vision, after having fasted for fifty days, he received the miraculous imprint of the wounds of the Savior on his hands, feet, and side.” His chief attributes were humility, poverty, and love for animals. In pictures he is always represented as accompanied by a pet lamb.