CHAPTER III.

ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST COAST OF AMERICA.

The Voyage of Francisco de Gualle, or Gali, in 1584.—Of Viscaino, in in 1598.—River of Martin d’Aguilar.—Cessation of Spanish Enterprises.—Jesuit Missions in California in the 18th century.—Voyage of Behring and Tchiricoff in 1741.—Presidios in Upper California.—Voyage of Juan Perez in 1774; of Heceta and de la Bodega in 1775.—Heceta’s Inlet.—Port Bucareli.—Bay of Bodega.—Hearne’s Journey to the Coppermine River.—Captain James Cook in 1776.—Russian Establishments, in 1783, as far as Prince William’s Sound; in 1787, as far as Mount Elias.—Expeditions from Macao, under the Portuguese flag, in 1785 and 1786; under that of the British East India Company in 1786.—Voyage of La Perouse in 1786.—King George’s Sound Company.—Portland and Dixon, in 1786.—Meares and Tipping, in 1786, under Flag of East India Company.—Duncan and Colnett in 1787.—Captain Barclay discovers in 1787 the Straits in 48° 30′, to which Meares gives the name of Juan de Fuca in 1788.—Prince of Wales’s Archipelago.—Gray and Kendrick.

The Spaniards had long coveted a position in the East Indies, but the Bull of Pope Alexander VI. precluded them from sailing eastward round the Cape of Good Hope; they had, in consequence, made many attempts to find their way thither across the Pacific. It was not, however, till 1564, that they succeeded in establishing themselves in the Philippine Islands. Thenceforth Spanish galleons sailed annually from Acapulco to Manilla, and back by Macao. The trade winds wafted them directly across from New Spain in about three months: on their return they occupied about double that time, and generally reached up into a northerly latitude, in order to avail themselves of the prevailing north-westers, which carried them to the shores of California.

An expedition of this kind is the next historical record of voyages on this coast, after Drake’s visit. Hakluyt has published the navigator’s own account of it in his edition of 1600, as the “True and perfect Description of a Voyage performed and done by Francisco de Gualle, a Spanish Captain and Pilot, &c., in the Year of our Lord 1584.” It purports to have been translated out of the original Spanish, verbatim, into Low Dutch, by J. H. van Lindschoten; and thence into English by Hakluyt. According to this version of it, Gualle, on his return from Macao, made the coast of New Spain “under seven-and-thirty degrees and a half.” The author of the “Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdés” has substituted 57½ for 37½ degrees in Gualle’s, or rather Gali’s, account, without stating any reason for it. Mr. Greenhow, indeed, refers to a note of that author’s, as intimating that he relied upon the evidence of papers found in the archives of the Indies, but on examining the note in p. xlvi., it evidently refers to two letters from the Archbishop of Mexico, then Viceroy of New Spain, to the King, in reference to an expedition which he proposed to intrust to Jayme Juan, for the discovery of the Straits of Anian. It is true that the Archbishop is stated to have consulted Gali upon his project, but the author of the “Introduction” specially alludes to Lindschoten, as the person to whom the account of Gali’s Voyage in 1582 was due, and refers to a French Translation of Lindschoten’s work, under the title of “Le Grand Routier de Mer,” published at Amsterdam in 1638. But Lindschoten’s original work was written in the Dutch language, being intitled “Reysgeschrift van de Navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten,” and was published towards the end of the sixteenth century; and two English translations of Gali’s Voyage immediately appeared, one in Wolf’s edition of Lindschoten, in 1598; the other in the third volume of Hakluyt, 1598-1600. Lindschoten’s own Dutch version was subsequently inserted in Witsen’s “Nord en Oost Tarterye,” in 1692. All these latter accounts, including the original, agree in stating seven-and-thirty degrees and a half as the latitude where Gali discovered “a very high and fair land, with many trees, and wholly without snow.” The passage in the original Dutch may be referred to in Burney’s History of Voyages, vol. v., p. 164. The French translation, however, which the author of the Introduction consulted, gives 57½°, the number being expressed in figures; but as this seems to be the only authority for the change, it can hardly justify it. “A high land,” observes Captain Burney, “ornamented with trees, and entirely without snow, is not inapplicable to the latitude of 37½°, but would not be credible if said of the American coast in 57½° N., though nothing were known of the extraordinary high mountains which are on the western side of America in that parallel.” It may be observed, that the French translator has likewise misstated the course which Gali held in reaching across from Japan to the American coast, by rendering “east and east-by-north” in the original, as “east and north-east” in the French version, making a difference of three points in the compass, which would take him much farther north than his true course.

M. Eyriés, in the article “Gali,” in the Biographie Universelle, puts forward the same view of the cause of the variation of the latitude in the account adopted by the author of the Introduction, namely, that it was derived from the French translation which he consulted. The words in the French version of the Grand Routier de Mer are; “Estans venus suivant ce mesme cours près de la coste de la Nouvelle Espagne à la hauteur de 57 degrez et demi, nous approchasmes d’un haut et fort beau pays, orné de nombre d’arbres et entièrement sans neige.” M. Eyriés, however, has fallen into a curious mistake, as he represents Gali to have made the identical voyage which is the subject of the narrative, in company with Jayme Juan, in execution of the project of the Viceroy of Mexico, which was never accomplished, instead of his having made the account of the voyage for him. That M. Eyriés is in error will be evident, not merely from the account of the author of the Introduction, if more carefully examined, as well as from the title and conclusion of the Voyage of Gali itself, as given in Hakluyt’s translation of the Dutch version of Lindschoten; but also from this circumstance, which seems to be conclusive. M. de Contreras, Archbishop of Mexico, was Viceroy of New Spain for the short space of one year only, and the letters which he wrote to the King of Spain, submitting his project of an expedition to explore the north-west coast of America for his Majesty’s approval, bore date the 22d January and 8th March, 1585. But Gali commenced his voyage from Acapulco in March 1582, and had returned by the year 1584, most probably before the Archbishop had entered upon his office of Viceroy, certainly before he submitted his plans to the King, which he had matured after consultation with Gali. It is difficult to account for M. Eyriés’ mistake, unless it originated in an imperfect acquaintance with the Spanish language, as the statement by the author of the Introduction is by no means obscure. Gali’s voyage was thus a private mercantile enterprise, and not an expedition authorised and directed by the Government of New Spain, which the account of M. Eyriés might lead his reader to suppose. It has acquired, accidentally, rather more importance of late than it substantially deserves, from the circumstance of its having been cited in support of the Spanish title to the north-west coast of America; it has consequently been thought to merit a fuller examination on the present occasion, as to its true limits northward, which clearly fall short of those attained by the Spaniards under Ferrelo, and very far short of those reached by the British under Drake.

The next authentic expeditions on these coasts were those conducted by Sebastian Viscaino. The growing rumours of the discovery of the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific by the Straits of Anian, and the necessity of providing accurate charts for the vessels engaged in the trade between New Spain and the Philippine islands, induced Philip II. to direct an expedition to be dispatched from Acapulco in 1596, to survey the coasts. Nothing however of importance was accomplished on this occasion, but on the succession of Philip III. in 1598, fresh orders were despatched to carry into execution the intentions of his predecessor. Thirty-two charts, according to Humboldt, prepared by Henri Martinez, a celebrated engineer, prove that Viscaino surveyed these coasts with unprecedented care and intelligence. “The sickness, however, of his crew, the want of provisions, and the extreme severity of the season, prevented his advancing further north than a headland in the 42d parallel, to which he gave the name of Cape Sebastian.” The smallest of his three vessels, however, conducted by Martin d’Aguilar and Antonio Florez, doubled Cape Mendocino, and reached the 43d parallel, where they found the mouth of a river which Cabrillo has been supposed by some to have previously discovered in 1543, and which was for some time considered to be the western extremity of the long-sought Straits of Anian. The subsequent report of the captain of a Manilla ship, in 1620, according to Mr. Greenhow, led the world to adopt a different view, and to suppose that it was the mouth of a passage into the northern extremity of the Gulf of California; and accordingly, in maps of the later half of the seventeenth century, California was represented to be an island, of which Cape Blanco was the northernmost headland. After this error had been corrected by the researches of the Jesuit Kuhn, in 1709, we find in the maps of the eighteenth century, such as that of Guillaume de Lisle, published in Paris in 1722, California a peninsula, Cape Blanco a headland in 45°, and near it marked “Entrée découverte par d’Aguilar.”

With Gali and Viscaino terminates the brilliant period of Spanish discoveries along the north-west coast of America. The governors of New Spain during the remainder of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, confined their attention to securing the shores of the peninsula of California against the armed vessels of hostile Powers, which, after the discovery of the passage round Cape Horn in 1616, by the Dutch navigators Lemaire and Van Schouten, carried on their depredations in the Pacific with increasing frequency. The country itself of California, was in 1697 subjected, by a royal warrant, to an experimental process of civilisation at the hands of the Jesuits, which their success in Paraguay emboldened them to undertake. In about sixty years a chain of missions was established along the whole eastern side of California, and the followers of Loyola may be considered to have ruled the country, till the decree issued by Charles III. in 1767, for the immediate banishment of the society from the Spanish dominions, led to their expulsion from the New World. During this long period, the only expedition of discovery that ventured into these seas was that which Behring and Tchiricoff led forth in 1741 from the shores of Kamtchatka, under the Russian flag. Behring’s own voyage southward is not supposed to have extended beyond the 60th parallel of north latitude, where he discovered a stupendous mountain, visible at the distance of more than eighty miles, to which he gave the name of Mount St. Elias, which it still bears. The account is derived from the journal of Steller, the naturalist of Behring’s ship, which Professor Pallas first published in 1795, as Behring himself died on his voyage home, in one of the islands of the Aleutian Archipelago, between 54½ and 55½ degrees north latitude. Here his vessel had been wrecked, and the island still bears the name of the Russian navigator. Tchiricoff, on the other hand, advanced further eastward, and the Russians themselves maintain that he pushed his discoveries as far south as the 49th parallel of north latitude, (Letter from the Chevalier de Poletica, Russian Minister, to the Secretary of State at Washington, February 28, 1822, in British and Foreign State Papers, 1821-22, p. 483;) but this has been disputed. Mr. Greenhow considers, from the description of the latitude and bearings of the land discovered by him, that it must have been one of the islands of the Prince of Wales’s Archipelago, in about 56°.