ORONTIUS FINÆUS, 1531.
[Reduced by Brevoort to Mercator's projection.]
CORTES.
The Pacific explored.
California.
Previous to Cortes's departure for Spain in 1528, he had, as we have seen, dispatched vessels from Tehuantepec to the Moluccas, but nothing was done to explore the Pacific coast northward till his return to Mexico. In the spring or early summer of 1532 he sent Hurtado de Mendoza up the coast; but little success attending the exploration, Cortes himself proceeded to Tehuantepec and constructed other vessels, which sailed in October, 1533. A gale drove them to the west, and when they succeeded in working back and making the coast, they found themselves well up what proved to be the California peninsula. They now coasted south and developed its shape, which was further brought out in detail by an expedition led by Cortes himself in 1535, and by a later one sent by him under Francisco de Ulloa in 1539. Cortes had supposed the peninsula an island, but this expedition of 1539 demonstrated the fact that no passage to the outer sea existed at the head of the gulf, which these earliest navigators had called the Sea of Cortes. The conqueror of Mexico had now made his last expedition on the Pacific, and his name was not destined to be long connected with this new field of discovery, unless, indeed, it was a prompting of Cortes—hardly proved, however—which attached to this peninsular region the euphonious name of California, and which, after an interval when the gulf was called the Red Sea, was applied to that water also. The views of Ulloa were confirmed in part, at least, by Castillo in 1540, who has left us a map of the gulf.
CASTILLO'S CALIFORNIA.