[1295] Cf. post, chap. vii.
[1296] Notes, etc., p. 4.
[1297] We have Alarcon’s narrative in Ramusio, iii. 363; Herrera, Dec. vi. p. 208; Hakluyt, iii. 425, 505; Ternaux-Compans’ Voyages, etc., ix. 299. Bancroft (North Mexican States, vol. i. p. 93) gives various references. An intended second expedition under Alarcon, with a co-operating fleet to follow the outer coast of the peninsula, failed of execution. The instructions given in 1541 to Alarcon for his voyage on the California coast, by order of Mendoza, are given in B. Smith’s Coleccion, p. 1.
[1298] These are the ship’s figures; but it is thought their reckoning was one or two degrees too high.
[1299] Attempts have been made. Cf. Bancroft, California, i. 70; Northwest Coast, i. 38.
[1300] The source of our information for this voyage is a Relacion (June 27, 1542, to April 14, 1543) printed in Pacheco’s Coleccion de documentos inéditos, xiv. 165; and very little is added from other sources, given in Bancroft, North Mexican States, i. 133. Buckingham Smith gave the Relacion earlier in his Coleccion de varios Documentos para la historia de la Florida y Tierras adyacentes (Madrid, 1857, vol. i. p. 173). A translation is contained in Wheeler’s United States Geological Survey, vol. vii., with notes, and an earlier English version by Alexander S. Taylor was published in San Francisco in 1853, as The First Voyage to the Coast of California. Cf. also Bancroft’s California, i. 69; Northwest Coast, i. 137. It is thought that Juan Paez was the author of the original, which is preserved among the Simancas papers at Seville. Herrera seems to have used it, omitting much and adding somewhat, thus making the narrative which, till the original was printed, supplied the staple source to most writers on the subject. In 1802 Navarrete summarized the story from this Relacion in vol. xv. of his Documentos inéditos. Bancroft (vol. i. p. 81) cites numerous unimportant references.
[1301] Nouvelle Espagne (i. 330), where, as well as in other of the later writers, it is said the name “Anian” came from one of Cortereal’s companions. But see H. H. Bancroft, Northwest Coast, vol. i. pp. 36, 55, 56, where he conjectures that the name is a confused reminiscence at a later day of the name of Anus Cortereal, mentioned by Hakluyt in 1582.
[1302] There was at one time a current belief in the story of a Dutch vessel being driven through such a strait to the Pacific, passing the great city of Quivira, which had been founded by the Aztecs after they had been driven from Mexico by the Spaniards. Then there are similar stories told by Menendez (1554) and associated with Urdaneta’s name (cf. Bancroft, Northwest Coast, vol. i. p. 51); and at a later day other like stories often prevailed. The early maps place the “Regnum Anian” and “Quivira” on our northwestern coast. Bancroft (Northwest Coast, vol. i. pp. 45, 49) thinks Gomara responsible for transferring Quivira from the plains to the coast. See Editorial Note at the end of chap. vii.
It is sometimes said (see Bancroft, Northwest Coast, vol. i. p. 55) that the belief in the Straits of Anian sprang from a misinterpretation of a passage in Marco Polo; but Bancroft (p. 53) cannot trace the name back of 1574, as he finds it in one of the French (Antwerp) editions of Ortelius of that year. Ortelius had used the name, however, in his edition of 1570, but only as a copier, in this as in other respects, of Mercator, in his great map of 1569, as Bancroft seems to suspect. Porcacchi (1572), Furlani or Forlani (1574), and others put the name on the Asian side of the strait, where it is probable that it originally appeared. Bancroft (p. 81) is in error in saying that the name “Anian” was “for the first time” applied to the north and south passage between America and Asia, as distinct from the east and west passage across the continent, in the “Mercator Atlas of 1595;” for such an application is apparent in the map of Zalterius (1566), Mercator (1569), Porcacchi (1572), Forlani (1574), Best’s Frobisher (1578),—not to name others.
[1303] Sketched in this History, Vol. IV. p. 46.