to the North Pacific, for the purpose of exploring its American coasts, and of intercepting certain vessels which were reported to have been equipped at Boston, in New England, in search of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. From Callao he proceeded to Cape San Lucas, where he detached a vessel to explore the Californian Gulf; thence, continuing his voyage along the west coast, he passed about two hundred and sixty leagues, in crooked channels, among a collection of islands called by him the Archipelago of St. Lazarus; and beyond them he found, under the 53d degree of latitude, the mouth of a great river, which he named Rio de los Reyes - River of Kings. Having despatched his lieutenant, Bernardo, with one vessel, to trace the coast on the Pacific farther north, he entered the great river, and ascended it north-eastward, to a large lake, called, from the beauty of its shores, Lake Belle, containing many islands, and surrounded by a fine country, the inhabitants of which were kind and hospitable. On the south shore of the lake was the large town of Conasset, where the admiral left his vessels; thence he proceeded, (in what manner he does not say,) with some of his men, down a river called the Parmentier, flowing from Lake Belle eastward into another lake, to which he gave his own name, and thence, through a passage called the Strait of Ronquillo, in honor of one of his captains, to the sea.

On entering the sea, the admiral learned, from some Indians, "that, a little way off, lay a great ship, where there had never been one before ;" and, on boarding her, he found only an old man and a youth, who told him that they came from the town called Boston, in New England. On the following day, the captain, named Nicholas Shapley, arrived, with the owner of the ship, Seymour Gibbons, "a fine gentleman, and major-general of the largest colony in New England, called Maltechusetts," between whom and the admiral a struggle of courtesy was begun. The Spanish commander had been ordered to make prize of any people seeking for a north-west or a west passage; but he would look on the Bostonians as merchants, trading for skins; so he made magnificent presents to them all, and, having received, in return, their charts. and journals, he went back to his ships, in Lake Belle, and thence, down the Rio de los Reyes, to the sea.

In the mean time, the lieutenant, Bernardo, had ascended another river, called, by him, Rio de Haro, into a lake named Lake Velasco, situated under the 61st degree of latitude, from which he went, in

canoes, as far as the 79th degree, where the land was seen, "still trending north, and the ice rested on the land." He was also assured "that there was no communication out of the Atlantic Sea by Davis's Strait; for the natives had conducted one of his seamen to the head of Davis's Strait, which terminated in a fresh lake, of about thirty miles in circumference, in the 80th degree of north latitude; and there were prodigious mountains north of it." These accounts, added to his own observations, led Admiral Fonté to conclude " that there was no passage into the South Sea by what they call the northwest passage; " and he accordingly returned, with his vessels, through the Pacific, to Peru.

Such are the principal circumstances related-in the account of Admiral Fonté's voyage, which was, for some time after its appearance, received as true, and copied into all works on Northern America. In 1750, a French translation of the account, with a chart drawn from it, and a memoir, in support of its correctness, were presented to the Academy of Sciences of Paris by Messrs. Delisle and Buache, in consequence of which, the various Spanish repositories of papers respecting America were carefully examined, in search of information on the subject; and, in all the voyages of discovery along the north-west coasts of the continent, during the last century, endeavors were made to discover the mouth of the Rio de los Reyes. These labors, however, were vain. The existence of a number of islands near the position assigned to the Archipelago of St. Lazarus, and of a large river, (the Stikine,) entering the ocean near the 56th parallel, indeed, seems to favor the supposition that some voyage, of which we have no record, may have been made to that part of the Pacific before 1708; but the rivers and lakes through which Fonté was said to have passed his town of Conasset-and his Boston ship are now generally believed to have all emanated from the brain of James Petiver, a naturalist of some eminence, and one of the chief contributors to the Monthly Miscellany.

The account of the voyage and discoveries of Juan de Fuca, on the north-western side of America, in 1592, was, for a long time, considered as less worthy of credit than those above noticed. More recent examinations in that part of the world have, however, caused it to be removed from the class of fictions; although it is certainly erroneous as regards the principal circumstance related. All the information respecting this voyage is derived from "A Note made by Michael Lock, the elder, touching the Strait of Sea commonly called

Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the North-west Passage of Meta Incognita"-published in 1625, in the celebrated historical and geographical collection called The Pilgrims, by Samuel Purchas.*

Mr. Lock there relates that he met, at Venice, in April, 1596, “an old man, about sixty years of age, called, commonly, Juan de Fuca, but named, properly, Apostolos Valerianos, of nation a Greek, born in Cephalonia, of profession a mariner, and an ancient pilot of ships," who, "in long talks and conferences," declared that he had been in the naval service of Spain, in the West Indies, forty years, and that he was one of the crew of the galleon Santa Anna, when she was taken by Cavendish, near Cape San Lucas, in 1587, on which occasion "he had lost sixty thousand ducats of his own goods." After his return to Mexico, he was despatched, by the viceroy, with three vessels, "to discover the Strait of Anian, along the coast of the South Sea, and to fortify that strait, to resist the passage and proceeding of the English nation, which were feared to pass through that strait into the South Sea." This expedition, however, proving abortive, he was again sent, in 1592, with a small caravel, for the same purpose, in which "he followed his course west and north-west," along the coasts of Mexico and California, "until he came to the latitude of 47 degrees; and, there finding that the land trended north and north-east, with a broad inlet of sea, between 47 and 48 degrees of latitude, he entered thereinto, sailing therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime north-west, and north-east, and north, and also east, and south-eastward, and very much broader sea than was at the said entrance, and he passed by divers islands in that sailing; and, at the entrance of this said strait, there is, on the north-west coast thereof, a great head-land or island, with an exceeding high pinnacle, or spired rock, like a pillar thereupon. **** Being entered thus far into the said strait, and being come into the North Sea already, and finding the sea wide enough every where, and to be about thirty or forty leagues wide in the mouth of the straits, where he entered, he thought he had now well discharged his office; and that, not being armed to resist the force of the savage people that might happen, he therefore set sail, and returned to Acapulco."

The Greek went on to say that, upon his arrival in Mexico, the vice

The whole note will be found among the Proofs and Illustrations, in the latter part of this volume, under the letter A.

roy had welcomed him, and promised him a great reward; but that, after waiting in vain for two years, he had stole away to Europe, and, "understanding the noble mind of the queen of England, and of her wars against the Spaniards, and hoping that her majesty would do him justice for his goods lost by Captain Candish, he would be content to go into England, and serve her majesty in that voyage for the discovery perfectly of the north-west passage into the South Sea, if she would furnish him with only one ship of forty tons' burden, and a pinnace; and that he would perform it in thirty days' time, from one end to the other of the strait." Mr. Lock says that, on receiving this account, he endeavored to interest Sir Walter Raleigh, and other eminent persons in England, in behalf of the Greek pilot, and to have him employed on a voyage such as he proposed to undertake; but he was unable to do so, and, by the last accounts, the old man was dying in Cephalonia, in 1602.

These are the most material circumstances respecting Juan de Fuca and his voyage, as related by Mr. Lock, who was an intelligent and respectable merchant engaged in the Levant trade.* Other English writers, of the same time, allude to the subject; but they afford no additional particulars, nor has any thing been since learned, calculated to prove directly even that such a person as Juan de Fuca ever existed. On the contrary, the author of the Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, who loses no opportunity to exalt the merits of his countrymen as discoverers, after examining many papers in the archives of the Indies, relating to the period given as the date of the voyage, pronounces the whole to be a fabrication. The account attracted little attention in England, and was almost unknown, out of that kingdom, until after the publication of the journals of the last expedition of Cook, who conceived that he had, by his examinations on the north-western coasts of America, ascertained its falsehood. More recent examinations in that quarter have, however, served to establish a strong presumption in favor of its authenticity and general correctness, so far as the supposed narrator could himself have known; for they show that the geographical descriptions contained in it are as nearly conformable with the truth, as those of any other account of a voyage written in the early part of the seventeenth century.

Thus Juan de Fuca says that, between the 47th and 48th

* He was, for some time, the English consul at Aleppo, and was an intimate friend of Hakluyt, for whom he translated the Decades of Pedro Martir, and furnished other papers published by that collector.

degrees of latitude, he entered a broad inlet of sea, in which he sailed for twenty days, and found the land trending north-west, and north-east, and north, and east, and south-east, and that, in this course, he passed numerous islands. Now, the fact is, that, between the 48th and 49th degrees, a broad inlet of sea does extend from the Pacific, eastward, apparently penetrating the American continent to the distance of more than one hundred miles, after which it turns north-westward, and, continuing in that direction about two hundred and fifty miles farther, it again joins the Pacific Ocean. The differences as to the position and course of the inlet, between the two descriptions here compared, are few and slight, and are certainly all within the limits of supposable error on the part of the Greek, especially considering his advanced age, and the circumstance that he spoke only from recollection; while, on the other hand, the coincidences are too strong to be attributable only to chance. The pilot, indeed, asserts that through this inlet he sailed to the Atlantic, but he does not pretend that he reached any known coast, or previously-determined point of that ocean; so that he is liable only to the charge of having made an erroneous estimate of the extent and value of his discovery, which he might well have done, without any intention to deceive, as the breadth of the North American continent was then unknown.

Some false reports, such as those above mentioned, respecting the discovery of a northern passage between the two oceans, and the existence of rich nations in its vicinity, together with a desire to lessen the dangers of the navigation along the western side of California, by providing the ships in the Philippine trade with proper descriptions of the coasts, induced King Philip II. of Spain, in 1595, to order that measures should be taken for a complete survey of it. There were, also, other reasons for examining that part of

"His majesty knew that the viceroys of Mexico had endeavored to discover a northern passage; and he had found, among his father's papers, a declaration of certain strangers, to the effect that they had been driven, by violent winds, from the codfish coast, [about Newfoundland,] on the Atlantic, to the South Sea, through the Strait of Anian, which is beyond Cape Mendocino, and had, on their way, seen a rich and populous city, well fortified, and inhabited by a numerous and civilized nation, who had treated them well; as also many other things worthy to be seen and known. His majesty had also been informed that ships, sailing from China to Mexico, ran great risks, particularly near Cape Mendocino, where the storms are most violent, and that it would be advantageous to have that coast surveyed thence to Acapulco, so that the ships, mostly belonging to his majesty, should find places for relief and refreshment when needed." Whereupon, his majesty ordered the count de Monterey, viceroy of Mexico, to have those coasts surveyed, at his own expense, with all care and diligence, &c. - Torquemada, vol. i. p. 693.