The Making of the Great West (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Adams Drake
to the mainland.
Cabrillo3 sailed yet higher up, and others higher still, till the work of tracing the coast as far as Cape Mendocino4 itself was completed.
CALIFORNIA COAST.
Spanish power in the New World received now and here its first serious check, though possibly little was thought of it at the time, in Europe. Like David before Goliath, little England confronted the bully of Europe where least expected, with menace to her great and growing empire of the West.
The greatest seaman of his age, Francis Drake, whose name was the terror of Spaniards everywhere, had passed the Straits of Magellan with one little vessel, into the Great South Sea, which Balboa discovered and claimed for Spain. Stopping at no odds, one day fighting and the next plundering, Drake kept his undaunted way a thousand leagues up the coast. His ship being already full-freighted with the plunder of the ports at which she had called, Drake thought to shorten the way back to England by sailing through the North-east Passage,5 so outwitting the Spaniards who were keeping vigilant watch against his return southward,—for his men were but a handful against a world of foes, and his ship too precious to be risked in fight. So Drake sailed on into the north. He sailed as far as the Oregon coast, when the weather grew so cold that his men, who were come from tropic heats, began to murmur. Drake was therefore forced to put his ship about and steer south again, along the coast, looking for a harbor as he went, to refit his ship in. Finding this harbor6 in 38°, the Golden Hind dropped anchor there on the 17th of June, 1579, showing a flag which had never before been seen in that part of the world.
Drake lay quietly at anchor in this port for five weeks. During all this time the natives came in troops to the shore, drawn thither to see the strange bearded white men who spoke in an unknown tongue, and kept the loud thunder hid away in their ship. It is even said that the king of that country took the crown off his own head, and put it on Francis Drake's in token of submission. All this and much else is fully and quaintly set forth in the narrative of Master Fletcher, who was Drake's chaplain on board the Golden Hind.
Before leaving this friendly port, Drake took formal possession of the country by setting up a post, to which a plate of brass was fixed, with Queen Elizabeth's name engraved on it.
The white cliffs of the coast that rose about him, would seem to have recalled to Drake's mind those of Old England, for he gave the name of New Albion to all this great land he had merely coasted. We should not forget that Elizabeth herself afterwards said of such acts that "discovery is of little worth without actual possession."
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.
Having planted this thorn in the side of the Spanish Empire of the West, Drake merrily sailed away for England by way of the Cape of Good Hope.7
Spain complained. Elizabeth listened with impatience. When the Spanish ambassador insisted on his master's sole right to navigate the western ocean, the Queen lost her temper. She roundly told Mendoza that "the sea and air are common to all men." Yet the claim itself shows what mighty hold Spain had on the other powers. In eight years the question was fought out in the English Channel with all Europe for spectators. Spain was so sure of victory, that the popular feeling even got into the nursery rhymes of the day. A child is supposed to be saying,
"My brother Don John
To England is gone,
To kill the Drake,
And the queen to take,
And the heretics all to destroy."7
DRAKE SAILS AWAY.
Drake had perhaps done as much as any man to bring about the issue. He was there in the thick of the fight.8
So the spell of Spanish invincibility was broken at last. Spain was no longer mistress of the seas.
Next on her brilliant roll of navigators, comes Juan de Fuca, who (1592) discovered the straits that now bear his name. Spain still wanting a harbor in which the Manila galleons could refit when homeward bound, Sebastian Vizcaino (1602-1603), sometimes called "the Biscayner," entered the haven of San Diego, and that of Monterey,9 which he then named, as he also did the one lying within Point Reyes, called by him Port San Francisco.10 Exploration of this coast then ceased for a century and a half.
The real advance into California (1768), like all other Spanish movements on this continent, originated in a half-monkish, half-military plan for the conquest, conversion and civilization of the country. Enough was known of its soil and climate to show how far both exceeded the sterile steppes of New Mexico, where Spanish advance had already reached its farthest limit, and like a stream that meets an obstacle in its path, was turned into another channel. For where plants grow and rivers flow, God has fixed the abodes of men.
This movement began11 from the missions of Lower California. It was designed to extend the system by which Spain had first conquered, and since ruled, Mexico into the unoccupied and little-known province of Alta, or Upper, California. The viceroy was to furnish soldiers, the president-prelate of the Franciscan order, missionaries.
Thus coast batteries and forts were to be built for the defence of the best harbors, as well as to sustain the missions themselves, so forming a line of military strength along the coast sufficient to repel assault by sea or land, while the mountains behind them would be a barrier between the missions and the wild tribes who lived in the great valleys beyond. One arm was to seize upon and firmly hold the country in its grasp, while the other should gradually bring it into subjection to the Catholic faith. Then, with clerical rule once established, civil order was to come in. Therefore the first essential thing was to build a fort, and the second a church. In this way it was proposed to make rallying-points for civilization of these missions,12 although the plan founded an oligarchy and nothing else.
OLD MAP, SHOWING DRAKE'S PORT.
The Spaniards did not mean to till the soil themselves, but to make the Indians do it for them. Setting this scheme at work, a Franciscan mission was begun at San Diego in July, 1769. The next year another was established at Monterey. From these missions explorers presently made their way out to the valley of the San Joaquin, and even as far north as the great bay of San Francisco (1772), which took to itself, a little later, the name of the old Port San Francisco, with which it must not be confounded.
CARMEL MISSION CHURCH.
In 1776 the Mission of San Francisco was founded. Monterey being the chief settlement, the governor's official residence was fixed there; and now, so late as the period of American Independence, we have the machinery for civilization in California fairly set in motion.
The plan which the founders had proposed to themselves also included the building-up of pueblos, which should be located