And here Cortés’ connection with discoveries on the Pacific ends; for Mendoza, who had visions of his own, thwarted him in all subsequent attempts, till finally Cortés himself went to Spain. The name which his captains gave to the gulf, the Sea of Cortés, failed to abide. It grew to be generally called the Red Sea, out of some fancied resemblance, as Wytfliet says, to the Red Sea of the Old World. This appellation was supplanted in turn by the name of California, which, it is contended, was given to the peninsula by Cortés himself.[1293]
The oldest map which we were supposed to possess of these explorations about the gulf,[1294] before Dr. Hale brought the one, already mentioned, from Spain, was that of Castillo, of which a fac-simile is herewith given as published by Lorenzana in 1770, at Mexico, in his Historia de Nueva España. Castillo was the pilot of the expedition, sent by Mendoza to co-operate by sea with the famous expedition of Coronado,[1295] and which the viceroy put under the command of Hernando d’Alarcon. The fleet, sailing in May, 1540, reached the head of the gulf, and Alarcon ascended the Colorado in boats; but Marcou[1296] thinks he could not have gone up to the great cañon, which however he must have reached if his supposed latitude of 36° is correct. He failed to open communication with Coronado, but buried some letters under a cross, which one of that leader’s lieutenants subsequently found.[1297]
CASTILLO’S MAP, 1541.
This map is marked “Domingo del Castillo, piloto me fecit en Mexico, año del nacimiento de N. S. Jesu Christo de M. D. XLI.” Bancroft, Central America, vol. i. p. 153, gives a sketch of this map, and again in North Mexican States, i. 81; but he carries the outer coast of the peninsula too far to the west.
In 1542 and 1543 an expedition which started under Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, explored the coast as far as 44° north,[1298] reaching that point by coasting from 33°, where he struck the land. He made a port which he calls San Miguel, which Bancroft is inclined to believe is San Diego; but the accounts are too confused to track him confidently,[1299] and it is probable that Cabrillo’s own vessel did not get above 38°, for Cabrillo himself died Jan. 3, 1543, his chief pilot, Ferrelo (or Ferrer), continuing the explorations.[1300] Bancroft does not think that the pilot passed north of Cape Mendocino in 40° 26´.
Thus from the time when Balboa discovered the South Sea, the Spanish had taken thirty years to develop the coast northerly, to the latitude of Oregon. In this distance they had found nothing of the Straits of Anian, which, if Humboldt[1301] is correct, had begun to take form in people’s minds ever since Cortereal, in 1500, had supposed Hudson’s Straits to be the easterly entrance of a westerly passage.[1302]
