In June he had reached 42° north, though some have supposed that he went several degrees higher. He had met, however, a rigorous season, and his ropes crackled with the ice. The change was such a contrast to the allurements of his experiences farther to the south that he gave up his search for the strait that would carry him, as he had hoped, to the Atlantic, and, turning south, he reached a bay somewhere in the neighborhood of San Francisco, where he tarried for a while. Having placed the name of New Albion on the upper California coast, and fearing to run the hazards of the southern seas, where his plundering had made the Spaniards alert, he sailed westerly, and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reached England in due time, and was acknowledged to be the earliest of English circumnavigators.
FRANCIS DRAKE.
It is one of the results of Drake's explorations in 1579-80 that we get in subsequent maps a more northerly trend to the California coast.
Confusion in the Pacific coast cartography.
Shortly after this, a great confusion in the maps of this Pacific region came in. From what it arose is not very apparent, except that absence of direct knowledge in geography opens a wide field for discursiveness. The Michael Lok map of 1582 indicates this uncertainty. It seemed to be the notion that the Arctic Sea was one and the same with that of Verrazano; also, that it came down to about the latitude of Puget Sound, and that the Gulf of California stretched nearly up to meet it.
Francisco Gali.
Proves the great width of the Pacific.