Amongst its defenders the most conspicuous were J. N. de l’Isle, the brother of William de l’Isle, and Philippe Buache, the geographer of the French King, the predecessor of J. N. Buache, who has already been mentioned as the author of a memoir in defence of Maldonado’s narrative. De l’Isle presented to the Academy of Sciences, in 1750, a memoir “sur les nouvelles découvertes au nord de la mer du Sud,” with a map prepared by Ph. Buache, to represent these discoveries. The communication was in other respects of great importance, as it contained the first authentic account of the discoveries lately made by Behring and Tchiricoff, in 1741. It is not stated from what source De l’Isle derived the copy of Fonte’s letter, which seems to have come into his possession accidentally at St. Petersburg, during the absence of the Russian expedition: it was not, however, till his return to France in 1747, that he examined it in company with Ph. Buache. They were agreeably surprised to find that it accorded with Buache’s own conjectures, that it harmonised in many respects with the discoveries of the Russians. In consequence, Buache laid down in his new map a water communication between the Pacific Ocean and Hudson’s Bay. Voltaire, relying on the authority of De l’Isle, maintained in his History of Russia, published in 1759, that the famous passage so long sought for had been at last discovered. The Academy, however, received Fonte’s narrative with discreet reserve; and observed, that it required more certain proofs to substantiate it.
The author of the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana states, that the Spanish government, on the representation of the French geographers, instituted a careful search into the archives of the Indies in New Spain, as well as into the archives of Peru, and likewise into the archives at Seville, Madrid, Cadiz, and other places, but that not the slightest allusion to De Fonte could be anywhere traced. This result was made known by Robert de Vaugondy, in his reply to Buache, intitled “Observations Critiques sur les nouvelles Découvertes de l’Amiral Fuentes, 8vo. 1753;” and the author of the Noticia di California, published in Madrid, in 1757, confirmed Vaugondy’s announcement.
It is unnecessary to observe, that the experience of subsequent navigators has failed to confirm the narrative of De Fonte. There is one passage in the narrative which seems almost of itself to be sufficient to condemn the story. The admiral is made to state, “that he despatched one of his vessels to discover whether California was an island or not; for before it was not known whether California was an island or a peninsula.” Now the Californian Gulf had been completely explored by Francisco de Ulloa, in 1539, who ascertained the fact of the junction of the peninsula to the main land, near the 32d degree of latitude; and again by Fernando de Alarcon, in 1540, who ascended a great river at the head of the Gulf of California, supposed to be the Colorado. A series of excellent charts were drawn up by Domingo del Castillo, Alarcon’s pilot, a fac-simile of which Mr. Greenhow (p. 61) states may be found in the edition of the letters of Cortez, published at Mexico in 1770, by Archbishop Lorenzana. The shores of the gulf, and of the west side of California, to the 30th degree of latitude, were there delineated with a surprising approach of accuracy. It is not a reasonable supposition that the Admiral of New Spain and Peru, who must have had ready access to the archives of the Indies at Mexico, should have expressed himself in a manner which argued a total ignorance of the previous discoveries of his countrymen; but it was very probable that a contributor to the Monthly Miscellany should stumble upon this ground, from a notion having been revived in Europe, about the middle of the 17th century, that California was an island.
Humboldt, in his Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, l. iii., c. viii., states, that when the Jesuits Kühn, Salvatierra, and Ugarte, explored, in detail, during the years 1701-21, the coasts of the Gulf of California, it was thought in Europe to have been for the first time discovered that California was a peninsula. But, in his Introduction Géographique, he observes, that in the sixteenth century no person in Mexico denied this fact; nor was it till the seventeenth century that the idea originated that California was an island. During the seventeenth century, the Dutch freebooters were amongst the most active and inveterate enemies of Spain in the New World; and having established themselves in the bay of Pichilingue, on the east coast of California, from which circumstance they received the name of “Pichilingues,” they caused great embarrassment to the Spanish viceroys from their proximity to the coasts of Mexico. To these adventurers the origin of the notion, that California was separated from the main land, has been referred by some authors; but Mr. Greenhow (p. 94) states, that it was to be traced to the captain of a Manilla ship, in 1620, who reported that the asserted river of D’Aguilar was the western mouth of a channel which separated the northern extremity of California from the main land. A survey of the lower part of the peninsula was executed by the Governor of Cinaloa, and the Jesuit Jacinto Cortes, in pursuance of the orders of the Duke of Escalona, who was Viceroy during 1610-42, about the very time when Fonte purported to have sailed. They did not, however, go to the head of the gulf; and Humboldt informs us, that, during the feeble reign of Charles II. of Spain, 1655-1700, several writers had begun to regard California as a cluster of large islands, under the name of “Islas Carolinas.” Thus we find in the maps of this period, in those for example of Sanson, Paris, 1650; of Du Val, geographer to the King of France, Abbeville, 1655; of Jenner, London, 1666; of De Wit, Amsterdam; of Vischer, Schenkius, Herman, Moll, and others, which are in the King’s Library at the British Museum, California is depicted as an island; and in Jenner’s Map, in which C. Blanco is the northernmost headland of California, there is this note:—“This California was in times past thought to have been a part of the continent, and so made in all maps; but, by further discoveries, was found to be an island, long 1700 leagues.”
On the other hand, the maps of the later part of the sixteenth, and the earlier part of the seventeenth centuries, such as those by Ortelius, the King of Spain’s geographer, published in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first edited in 1570, the two maps adopted by Hakluyt in the respective editions of his voyages, in 1589 and 1600, that of Le Clerc, 1602, of Hondius, which Purchas adopted in his Pilgrims, in 1625, of Speed, 1646, and that of Blaew in his Novus Atlas of 1648, agree in representing California as a peninsula. The single passage, therefore, in De Fonte’s account, in which he, being “then admiral of New Spain and Peru, and now prince (or rather president) of Chili, explicitly states that he despatched one of his vessels, under the command of Don Diego Pennelosa, the nephew of Don Luis de Haro,” then great minister of Spain, “to discover whether California was an island or not, for before it was not known whether it was an island or a peninsula,” seems to point at once to the European origin of the tale. Mr. Dalrymple, the well-known secretary of the British Admiralty at the time of the Nootka Sound controversy, who was distinguished as the author of many able works on maritime discoveries, considered the story to have been a jeu-d’esprit of Mr. James Petiver the naturalist, one of the contributors to the Monthly Miscellany, whose taste for such subjects was evinced by his collection of MS. extracts, since preserved in the British Museum, and whose talent for such kind of composition was shown by his Account of a Voyage to the Levant, published in the same Miscellany. It is worthy of remark, that the tale of De Fuca and the letter of De Fonte, as they have derived their origin, so they have derived their support, from writers foreign to the nation in whose favour they set up the asserted discoveries, and from them alone. Maldonado, it is true, was a Spaniard, but he likewise has found defenders only amongst strangers, whilst in his own country his narrative has been condemned as an imposture by posterity equally as by his cotemporaries.
CHAPTER V.
THE CONVENTION OF THE ESCURIAL.
The King George’s Sound Company, in 1785.—Dixon and Portlock.—The Nootka and Sea Otter.—The Captain Cook and Experiment.—Expedition of Captain Hanna under the Portuguese Flag.—The Felice and Iphigenia.—The Princesa and San Carlos, in 1788.—Martinez and Haro directed to occupy Nootka in 1789.—The Princess Royal arrives at Nootka.—Colnett arrives in the Argonaut, July 2, 1789, with instructions to found a Factory.—He is seized, with his Vessel, by Martinez.—The Princess Royal also seized.—Both vessels sent as Prizes to San Blas.—The Columbia and Washington allowed to depart.—Representation of the Spanish Government to the Court of London.—British Reply.—Memorial of Captain Meares.—Message of the British Crown to Parliament.—British Note of May 5, 1790, to the Spanish Minister in London.—British Memorial of May 16.—Memorial of the Court of Spain, July 13.—Declaration of his Catholic Majesty to all the Courts of Europe.—Treaty of Utrecht.—Declaration and Counter declaration of July 4.—Spain demands aid from France, according to the Family Compact of 1761.—The National Assembly promotes a peaceful Adjustment of the Dispute.—Convention between Spain and Great Britain signed at the Escurial, Oct. 28, 1790.—Recognition of the Claims of Great Britain.