Benton County, Oregon - Chapter 4: Voyages in the Pacific and Atlantic, 1885

That in the meantime the English should find out the so-much-desired passage to the South Sea, by the north of America and above California, which passage is not universally denied, and one day may be found ; that they may fortify themselves on both sides of this passage, and thus extend the English dominion from the north to the south of America, so as to border on our possessions. Should English colonies and garrisons be established along the coast of America on the South Sea beyond Cape Mendocino, or lower down on California itself, England would then, without control, reign mistress of the sea and its commerce, and be able to threaten by land and sea the territories of Spain ; invade them on occasion from the E., W., N. and S., hem them in and press them on all sides.

In compliance with his sovereign's mandate, the viceroy dispatched three vessels from Acapulco in the spring of 1596, under the command of Sebastian Viscaino. Beyond an attempt to plant two colonies, both of which were unsuccessful because of the sterility of the country and the savage hostility of the natives, nothing was accomplished by this feeble pretense of obeying instructions. The viceroy was not permitted to thus shirk the expense of making a proper survey of the coast ; for though he was respited for a time by the death of the king in 1598, one of the first acts of Philip III. after being securely seated upon the throne, was to command the viceroy to attend to this matter without further delay. Viscaino was, in consequence, again sent out, this time upon a genuine voyage of exploration. His two vessels and small fragata were furnished with all the necessaries of an extended cruise, and he was accompanied by pilots, draftsmen and priests, so that advantage could be taken of all discoveries and proper records and charts made of them.

The fleet sailed from Acapulco May 5, 1602, and began exploring the coast at the southern extremity of the peninsula of California. They were much baffled by a wind blowing almost constantly from the northwest, which Torquemada says was produced " by the foe of the human race, in order to prevent the advance of the ships, and to delay the discovery of those countries, and the conversion of their inhabitants to the Catholic faith." Added to this difficulty was the terrible malady, the scurvy, which made sad inroads upon the health of the crews. They continued up the coast in spite of these discouraging circumstances, entering the ports of San Quentin, San Diego and Monterey. Here it was found that sixteen of the seamen had died and that many others were incapacitated by disease from performing duty ; and it was decided to send back the ship commanded by Toribio Gomez de Corvan with the invalids. Corvan reached Acapulco after a long and terrible journey with but few of the crew of his vessel alive.

A few days later, on the third of January, 1603, the two remaining vessels renewed the voyage, and were soon separated in a gale, from the fury of which the larger one took refuge in a bay spoken of in the record of the voyage as San Francisco, where search was made for a Spanish galleon which had been wrecked there in 1595. Torquemada says : " He anchored behind a point of rocks called La Punta de los Raves, in the port of San Francisco." It seems impossible that this could have been San Francisco bay ; for one of the chief objects of the voyage was to find a harbor of refuge and supply for vessels in the Manila trade, and yet upon his return Viscaino recommended San Diego ahd Monterey as being the only ones at all suitable for that purpose ; yet it will be remembered that in later years, before any absolute record of the discovery of this bay was made, a chart upon which such a bay was indicated was found by an Englishman on a captured Manila galleon. The probabilities are, however, that the bay Viscaino entered was Drake's bay, just north of the Golden Gate, the place where Sir Francis Drake a few r years before had enacted his farce of taking possesion of the country in the name of the queen of England. Viscaino resumed his journey and on the twentieth of January reached a point on the coast opposite a large white bluff, in latitude 42°, which he named Cape San Sebastian. The weather being cold and stormy, his crew being nearly all disabled by the scurvy, and being unable to discover any sign of the other vessel, Viscaino turned back at this point, and reached Mexico in March. The fragata proceeded north when separated from the ship off San Francisco bay, and encountering another severe storm took refuge near Cape Mendocino. Of the remainder of its explorations Torquemada says : " When the wind had became less violent they continued their journey close along the shore ; and, on the nineteenth of January, the pilot, Antonio Flores, found that they were in the latitude of 43 degrees, where the land formed a cape or point, which was named Cape Blanco. From that point the coast begins to turn to the northwest ; and near it was discovered a rapid and abundant river, with ash trees, willows, brambles, and other trees of Castile on its banks, which they endeavored to enter, but could not from the force of the current. Ensign Martin de Aguilar, the commander, and Antonio Flores, the pilot, seeing that they had already reached a higher latitude than was ordered by the viceroy in his instructions, that the Captaina [Viscaino's vessel] did not appear, and that the number of sick was great, agreed to return to Acapulco."

The fragata reached Acapulco soon after the larger vessel, the ravages of the scurvy having deprived it of its commander, pilot and the greater portion of the crew on the return voyage. This disease and its cause do not appear to have been well understood at that time. The suffering it caused was most terrible, and it is remarkable what fortitude the Spaniards displayed in continuing their voyages during the prevalence of such a horrible malady. In describing their sufferings, Torquemada says : u Nor is the least ease to be expected from change of place, as the slightest motion is attended with such severe pains that they must be very fond of life who would not willingly lay it down on the first appearance of so terrible a distemper. This virulent humour makes such ravages in the body that it is entirely covered with ulcers, and the poor patients are unable to bear the least pressure ; even the very clothes laid on them deprive them of life. Thus they lie groaning and incapable of any relief. . For the greatest assistance possible to be given them, if I may be allowed the expression, is not to touch them, nor even the ted clothes. These effects, however melancholy, are not the only ones produced by this pestilential humour. In many, the gums, both of the upper and lower jaws, are pressed both within and without to such a degree, that the teeth cannot touch one another, and withal so loose and bare that they shake with the least motion of the head, and some of the patients spit their teeth out with their saliva. Thus they w r ere unable to receive any food but liquid, as gruel, broth, milk of almonds and the like. This gradually brought on so great a weakness that they died while talking to their friends. * * * Some, by w r ay of ease, made loud complaints, others lamented their sins with the deepest contrition, some died talking, some sleeping, some eating, some whilst sitting up in their beds."

The great river said to have been discovered by this expedition attracted much attention at the time. The historian quoted above said of it : " It is supposed that this river is the one leading to a great city, which was discovered by the Dutch when they were driven thither by storms, and that it is the Strait of Anian, through which the ship passed in sailing from the North sea to the South sea ; and that the city called Quivira is in those parts ; and that this is the region referred to in the account which his majesty read, and which induced him to order this expedition." No great river exists in latitude 43 degrees ; but it is well known that the navigators of that period were seldom accurate in their observations, often varying as much as half a degree, and it is quite possible the stream referred to may have been the Umpqua. A few years later it was supposed that this stream was one end of a passage extending from the Gulf of California to Cape Blanco, making of California a huge island, and this idea was supported by the knowledge of the Colorado river, w r hich had been explored many miles to the northward. Venegas, writing in the seventeenth century, speaks of California as an island, and it was so designated on all maps until the end of the century. After this was discovered to be a mistake, the river w r as laid dow T n on some maps as a large stream flowing from the interior of the continent - such a stream as the Columbia - or as the western end of a paasage leading from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Very little was known of the width of the continent ; and geographers supposed it was but a short distance between the South sea and North sea. They had no idea that a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would have been 4,000 miles in length.

Upon his return to Mexico Viscaino strongly urged the viceroy to establish supp ly stations at San Diego and Monterey and to thus take possession of a country which he was satisfied, from what he learned by careful inquiry among the natives he encountered along the coast, was extremely fertile and rich in the precious metals; but the viceroy had too much consideration for his personal interests, since the expense of such an undertaking would have fallen solely upon himself, and neglected to utilize the information thus obtained. Viscaino, disgusted with the viceroy's inactivity, departed for Spain to present his views at court; and after long delay and persistent importuning secured a royal mandate to the viceroy, commanding him to establish a supply station for the India trade at Monterey. This order was issued in 1606, and with it Viscaino hastened to Mexico; but before the final preparations were completed he was taken sick and died, and the colonizing enterprise was abandoned. With no enthusiastic explorer to arouse him to action and with no hostile fleets in the Pacific to annoy him, the Spanish monarch apparently thought no more of the Pacific coast or the northwest passage, and a few years later there was enough to occupy his attention at home. He ordered no more voyages of exploration, and the viceroys were careful to undertake none upon their own responsibility, nor any other enterprise unless the immediate prospective profits were great. For a hundred and sixty years Spain made no further effort to extend her explorations of the coast, nor did she even attempt the establishment of colonies at San Diego or Monterey, either for the purpose of taking possession of the country or forming refuge and supply stations for vessels returning from India. With the exception of the annual galleon which reached the coast on its return voyage in the latitude of Cape Mendocino, no Spanish vessel visited our shores for a century and a half. Not even the mythical straits, the fabulous city of Quivira, the untold riches and many wonderful objects supposed to exist in this vast unknown territory, were potent to arouse Spain from her lethargy. She made a few feeble efforts to protect her commerce at times during this period when attacked by roving privateers, but her attempts at colonization in Lower California, which will be spoken of later on, met with little success. There seemed to be no new Cortes, Pizarro, De Leon, Balboa or De Soto. The spirit of adventure was dead. Spain had passed her zenith and was rapidly on the decline. Wars with the Netherlands, France and Portugal were most disastrous. Power, wealth and territory rapidly decreased, and in a century she declined from the foremost position in the world to that of a second rate power, and has never been able to regain her lost ground. With such disasters crowding upon her in the Old World, her apathy in the New was but a natural result.

Though Spain had ceased her voyages of exploration, such was not the case with her powerful European neighbors, who were indefatigable in their efforts to explore and colonize the Atlantic coast of America. The English, French and Dutch planted colonies on the coast, while their hardy navigators unremittingly explored its bays, rivers, straits and sounds. Uppermost in the minds of all was the northwest passage. The stories of its discovery which have already been related, and many others unworthy of repetition, kept the Straits of Anian constantly in the public mind. In 1608 Henry Hudson passed into and to a certain extent explored the bay upon which he bestowed his name ; yet he was but following the route pursued by Cortereal more than a century before, whose theory that it connected with the Indian ocean had given rise to this universal belief in the mythical straits. In 1616 William Baffin penetrated into the bay that bears his name, lying between America and Greenland, and entered a passage extending westward near the 74th parallel, but was unable to proceed because of the vast quantities of ice. This voyage and others made into the extreme north, proved conclusively that no open passage could be possible in the 75th degree of latitude, where Maldonado had located his tortuous channel leading from the Atlantic to the North sea, and geographers became convinced that if such a passage and sea existed they were the straits and bay explored and named by Hudson. The belief was natural, then, that if found at all, the Straits of Anian should be looked for in some of the many unexplored arms of Hudson's bay. For a time, however, after Baffin's voyage, England was so engrossed in her own. troubles that neither Royalists nor Commoners had time or inclination to prosecute foreign explorations.

The expeditions of the Dutch were chiefly to the southward, and in 1616 Lemaire and Van Schouten made a most important discovery. It was that in passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it was unnecessary to tempt the dangers of Magellan's straits, but that to the south of these there existed an open sea. Though the passage of Cape Horn, named by them in honor of the city in Holland from which they came, was still a tempestuous one, it served to remove the fear all seaman entertained of undertaking to cross from one ocean to the other through the narrow and rocky channel above Terra del Fuego. This discovery was nearly as disastrous to Spanish commerce in the Pacific as that of the much feared one from the North sea could possibly have been; for there now existed no obstacle to prevent hostile vessels from entering or leaving the Pacific at will, since the open sea was too large to be guarded even had Spain the necessary vessels of war for such a purpose.

Spain was now involved in European wars, and to the disasters that were showered upon her head at home were added others in America. English, French and Dutch buccaneers, and especially the latter during the war for independence by the Netherlands, ravaged the Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast. Dutch privateers frequented the Gulf of California, from which they preyed upon the Spanish commerce and enriched themselves with captured booty. By their victims they were known as Pichilingues, because the bay of Pichilingue, on the western side of the gulf, was made their chief point of rendezvous.

Spain made a few feeble and spasmodic efforts to dislodge these piratical pests and protect her plundered commerce, by sending out expeditions against them and by attempting to plant a colony on Lower California as a base of defensive operations. In 1631, 1644, 1664, 1667 and 1668 such efforts were made; but they were wholly fruitless, and in no instance were the enterprises conducted with the vigor and courage displayed by the Spanish adventurers of a century before. A final effort was made in 1683 by Don Isdro de Otondo, who headed an expedition of soldiers, settlers and Jesuit priests^ whom he established at various points, making La Paz the headquarters and chief settlement and building there a chapel for worship and to aid in the conversion of the natives. Father Kino was in charge of the religious part of the enterprise, and set about learning the Indian language, and soon translated into their tongue the creeds of the Catholic Church. The effort lasted about three years, during which time they were visited with an eighteen months' drought, and before they had recovered from the blow, received orders to put to sea, and bring into Acapulco safely the Spanish galleon, then in danger of capture by Dutch privateers lying in wait for her. This was successfully accomplished, the treasure-ship was conveyed safely in, but the act resulted in the abandonment of the colony; and a council of chief authorities in Mexico soon after decided that the reduction of California by such means was impracticable.

After Charles II. came to the throne of England, from which his father had been driven by the austere Cromwell, attention was again turned by that nation to explorations for the northwest passage. The belief that in Hudson's bay would be found the entrance to the mythical straits, led to the organization of the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the king granted, in 1669, the whole region whose waters flow into that great inland sea. The objects of " The company of adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," as expressed in the charter, were those of trade and the discovery of a passage leading into the Pacific ocean. It was not long, however, before the company learned that its franchise for trading purposes was an exceedingly valuable one, and that the discovery of a passage through its dominions, which would of necessity invoke competition from other organizations, was highly undesirable. From that time it not only made no effort to discover the passage, but discouraged all such expeditions, even keeping as secret as possible all geographical knowledge acquired by its agents, which policy obtains even to the present day, and which has kept as a fur-bearing wilderness the whole northern half of the North American continent.