SOME EARLY VOYAGES.

It should be understood that after the conquest of Mexico by Cortes (1520-1521), many expeditions by sea were sent forth to discover new wonders on the Pacific coast of North America. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that early ideas of the geography of the coast were exceedingly crude and limited. Even so late as the year 1741 Laurence Echard published in the London Gazetteer that California was a large island of the South Seas. In the year 1794 "The Young Man's Book of Knowledge," published in London, described California as "sixteen hundred miles broad, and two thousand miles long." The climate and soil were said to be like paradise, and this remarkable sentence occurs: "It has rich mines of silver, and some of gold, which are worked more and more every day."

The account was no doubt wholly mythical, for the following declaration is made immediately after the statement regarding the mines: "The dew that falls in California and lights on the rose leaves, candies and becomes hard like manna." Other equally absurd stories prevailed in those days, not only about this state, but regarding all things and countries remote from the observation of the simple and superstitious people of early times.

It is well known that in the year 1524 Gonzalo de Sandoval took to Cortes many strange stories of California, and they were transmitted to Emperor Charles V. Though it is inconceivable that the wisest thinkers of that day could have done otherwise than reject most of the accounts that reached their ears, yet it is known that many of the descriptions bore the impress of truth. Some of the narratives of fabulous wealth and virgin resources produced a profound impression on men of restless spirit, and the dream of brave men was to conquer foreign lands.

Asia was still believed to lie within the very gates of the new country; and so conservative a historian as Hittell asserts that the wildest imaginable rumers actually led to the discovery and subsequent exploration of California. The generations that passed after the first discoveries, and before explorations had been carried far, but served to whet the appetite for adventure.

Disappointed as the early Spaniards were of discovering the particular forms of wealth they had long dreamt of unearthing, they did in fact plant their adventurous feet on the soil of the great western empire of America.

XIMINES WAS THE DISCOVERER.

In 1522 Cortes, having made himself thorough master of Mexico, began to look ambitiously to the northward. His fortunes moved and varied in such a manner, however, that it was left for Fortuno Ximines to discover the Peninsula of California, now known as Lower California, in the year 1534. He sailed in La Conception, a ship owned by the powerful Cortes, and but for the aid of Cortes, Ximines could not have made the discovery.* The ambition of Cortes flamed high after he heard of the explorations of his subordinate, and he himself reached the promontory of San Felipe, on May 3, 1535, and took possession of the country in the name of the sovereign. He gave the name of Santa Cruz to the bay that surrounded him. La Paz, just north of Cape San Lucas, is supposed to have been the exact spot where the old explorer landed. The country was so bleak and forbidding that Cortes put to sea, and temporarily abandoned the attempt to settle the country by the Spanish.

By the year 1537 new rumors of the vast wealth of the country were in circulation throughout Mexico. Various expeditions failed, until Cortes dispatched one under Francisco de Ulloa, and to Ulloa largely belongs the credit for the early exploration of Lower California.

By 1540 Cortes, who was really on a freebooting expedition during all his western voyages, returned to Spain and abandoned California.

Light is shed on the conditions that existed in early times by some pertinent observations of John W. Dwinelle's, in an able address on the acquisition of California, delivered before the California Pioneer Society, in San Francisco, on September 10, 1866. He gave these facts:

"It was only by accident, after all, that Columbus discovered the vast region of continents and islands which are now called America. He was not in quest of new continents, nor of the golden-fruited gardens of the Hesperides. Believing, from inductive reasoning, that the earth was round, but with

*Note.-Ximines was a pilot under Becerra, and Becerra, one of the favorites of Cortes, was sent out in charge of an expedition that tried to learn the fate of a missing vessel of a previous expedition. Ximines and the crew mutinied. They really discovered Lower California, but Ximines and twenty of his men were murdered by the Indians. Ximines, or Ximenez, as he was often called, was under Becerra, whom he killed. After compelling the dead leader's friend to go ashore at a barren spot Ximenez sailed away from the scene of his crime. They at last discovered what was supposed to be an island, though it was in fact Lower California. Ximenez and his companions disembarked on the supposed island, and he and twenty companions were killed by Indians.

very imperfect notions of its magnitude, he was firmly persuaded that by sailing in a westerly direction from the coast of Spain, he would in due time arrive on the coast of China, which was then classed as a portion of the Indies; and when he discovered the first American islands, believing that he had already reached the Indies, he gave to the natives the name of Indians, which inaccurate classification they have ever since retained. Looking over the books and maps of the old geographers, it is curious and wonderful to observe how much they did know, and how much they did not know, of the geography of the northwestern coast of America for more than two hundred years after the discoveries made by Columbus. Although Cortes, when he fell into that inevitable disgrace with which the kings of Spain have always rewarded their greatest benefactors, sent out various expeditions from Mexico for the exploration of the northwestern coast, and even accompanied some of them as far as La Paz, in Lower California, and although the viceroys who succeeded him sent out various expeditions within fifty years after the conquest of Mexico, both by sea and by land, which must have penetrated as far north as the 42d degree of latitude, yet the physical geography of that region remained in the most mythical condition, and the very existence of the bay of San Francisco was contested as fabulous by the Spanish viceroys of New Spain less than a hundred years ago. There is in the possession of the Odd Fellows' library of this city an engraved map of the world, published at Venice in the year 1546, which is remarkable for its general accuracy and for the beauty of its execution, but on this map, at the latitude of San Francisco, the American continent is represented as sweeping around in a large circle, and forming a junction with that of Asia, while the Colorado, the largest river in the world, rising in the mountains of Thibet, and meandering through a course of 15,000 or 20,000 miles, pours its vast volume of waters into the Gulf of California. In the year 1588, a Spanish captain of marine, named Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, published an account of a voyage which he pretended to have made from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Northern sea, to the Pacific, and thence to China, giving all its geographical details and personal incidents. This apocryphal voyage proved a delusion and a stumbling-block to historians and voyagers for more than two hundred years, and it was not until the year 1791 that two Spanish frigates, sent out for that purpose by authority of the king of Spain, by a thorough exploration of the extreme

northwestern coast, established the fact that a passage through the North Sea did not exist, and that the pretensions of Maldonado were utterly false. It is only within a comparatively recent period that the fact has been generally received in modern geography that California was connected with the main continent, and was not an island. In Ogilvie's 'America, being the latest and most accurate account of the New World,' a most elegant and luxurious folio, published in London in 1671, California is laid down as an island, extending from Cape St. Lucas, in the tropic of Cancer, to the 45th degree of latitude, and including the famous New Albion of Sir Francis Drake. The same map is reproduced by Captain Shelvocke, of the royal navy, in his account of his 'Voyage Around the World by way of the South Sea,' in his Majesty's ship of war, published in London in 1726; and in a geographical work published in London in the same year, by Daniel Coxe, Esq., an account is given of a new and curious discovery and relation betwixt the river Meschachebe (Mississippi) and the South Sea, which separates America from China by means of several large rivers and lakes, with a description of the coast of the said sea to the Straits of Uries, as also of a rich and considerable trade to be carried on from thence to China, Japan and Tartary.' I can not ascertain that California was relieved of its insular character among geographers until the publication of a map by Father Begert, a missionary of the Society of Jesus, in an account of Lower California which he printed at Mannheim in 1771, on his return to Germany after his order had been expelled, in 1769, by order of the king of Spain, from the missions which they had successfully established among the Indians of Lower California. Even after it was admitted that California was not an island, but a part of the main land, the most indefinite notions prevailed as to the extent to which the Gulf of California penetrated toward the north; and to the very last of the Spanish and Mexican dominion, when any specific description was given to California in official documents, it was spoken of as a peninsula."

ORIGIN OF THE NAME.

Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard, Winfield Davis, and other historians, now accept Edward Everett Hales's conclusion that the name California was derived from an old romance and applied by Cortes to the

peninsula he discovered in 1535. Mr. Hale made his investigations in the year 1862, while reading the old romance, "Serges Esplandian," by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, the translator of Amidas. In this connection it is worth while to give some of the statements of the eminent Doctor Hale, for there have been a number of theories as to the origin of the name. He says: "Coming to the reference, in this forgotten romance, to the island of California, very near to the Terrestrial Paradise, I saw at once that here was the origin of the name of the state of California, long sought for by the antiquarians of that state, but long forgotten. For the romance seems to have been published in 1510-the edition of 1521 is now in existence while our California, even the peninsula of that name, was not discovered by the Spaniards till 1526, and was not named California till 1535."

Soon after his discovery, Mr. Hale invited the American Antiquarian Society to examine the evidence, and in March, 1864, he translated for the Atlantic Monthly all the parts of the story that relate to the Queen of California (Califia), and in 1873 he published a small volume on the subject, in which he said: "The name California was given by Cortes, who discovered the peninsula in 1535. For the statement that he named it, we have the authority of Herrera. It is proved, I think, that the expedition of Mendoza, in 1532, did not see California; it is certain that they gave it no name. Humboldt saw, in the archives of Mexico, a statement in manuscript that it was discovered in 1526; but for this there is no other authority. It is certain that the name does not appear till 1535. No etymology of this name has been presented satisfactory to the historians. Venegas, the Jesuit historian of California, writing in 1758, sums up the matter in these words: 'The most ancient name is California, used by Bernal Diaz, limited to a single bay. I could wish to gratify the reader by the etymology and true origin of this name; but in none of the various dialects of the natives could the missionaries find the least traces of such a name being given by them to the country, or even to any harbor, bay, or small part of it. Nor can I subscribe to the etymology of some writers, who suppose the name to be given to it by the Spaniards, on their feeling an unusual heat at their first landing here; that they thence called the country California, compounding the two Latin words calida and fornar, a hot furnace. I believe few will think the adven