The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery. Travers Twiss
agrees with the author of the World Encompassed, in dating Drake’s arrival at a convenient harbour on June 17—(Hakluyt gives this date in vol. iii., p. 524,)—so that Drake would have consumed twelve days in running back three and a half degrees, according to one version of the Famous Voyage, and four and a half degrees according to the other, before a wind which was so violent that he could not continue to beat against it. There is no doubt about the situation of the port where Drake took shelter, at least within half a degree, that it was either the Port de la Bodega, in 38° 28′, as some have with good reason supposed, (Maurelle’s Journal, p. 526, in Barrington’s Miscellanies,) or the Port de los Reyes, situated between La Bodega and Port San Francisco, in about 38°, as the Spaniards assert; and there is no difference in the two stories in respect to the interval which elapsed after Drake turned back, until he reached the port. There is, therefore, the improbability of Drake’s vessel, according to Hakluyt, making so little way in so long a time before a wind, to be set off against the improbability of its making, according to the World Encompassed, so much way in so short a time on a wind, the wind blowing undoubtedly all this time very violently from the north-west. Many persons may be disposed to think that the two improbabilities balance each other.
In respect to the intense cold, it must be remembered that the Famous Voyage, equally with the World Encompassed, refers to the great extremity of the cold as the cause of Drake’s drawing back again till he reached 38°. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Drake did turn back on account of his men being unable to bear up against the cold, after having so lately come out of the extreme heat of the tropics. Is it more probable that this intense cold should have been experienced in the higher or the lower latitude? for the intense cold must be admitted to be a fact. Drake seems to have been exposed to one of those severe winds termed Northers, which in the early part of the summer, bring down the atmosphere, even at New Orleans and Mexico, to the temperature of winter; but without seeking to account for the cold, as that would be foreign to the present inquiry, the fact, to whatever extent it be admitted, would rather support the statement that Drake reached the 48th parallel, than that he was constrained to turn back at the lower latitude of 43°.
It may likewise be observed that the description of the coast, “as trending continually north-westward, as if it went directly into Asia,” would correspond with the 48th parallel, but be altogether at variance with the 43d; and it is admitted by all, that Drake’s object was to discover a passage from the western to the eastern coast of North America. His therefore finding the land not to trend so much as one point to the east, but, on the contrary, to the westward, whilst it fully accounts for his changing his course, determines also where he decided to return. It should not be forgotten that the statement in the World Encompassed, that the coast trended to the westward in 48°, was in contradiction of the popular opinion regarding the supposed Straits of Anian, and if it were not the fact, the author hazarded, without an adequate object, the rejection of this part of his narrative, and unavoidably detracted from his own character for veracity.
We have, however, two cotemporaries of Sir Francis Drake, who confirm the statement of the World Encompassed. One of these has been strangely overlooked by Mr. Greenhow; namely, Stow the annalist, who, under the year 1580, gives an account of the return of Master Francis Drake to England, from his voyage round the world. “He passed,” he says, “forth northward, till he came to the latitude of forty-seven, thinking to have come that way home, but being constrained by fogs and cold winds to forsake his purpose, came backward to the line ward the tenth of June, 1579, and stayed in the latitude of thirty-eight, to grave and trim his ship, until the five-and-twenty of July.” This is evidently an account derived from sources quite distinct from those of either of the other two narratives. It occurs as early as 1592, in an edition of the Annals which is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, so that it was circulated two years at least before Drake’s death.
The other authority is that of one of the most celebrated navigators of Drake’s age, John Davis, of Sandrug by Dartmouth, who was the author of a work entitled “The World’s Hydrographical Discovery.” It was “imprinted at London, by Thomas Dawson, dwelling at the Three Cranes in the Vine-tree, in 1595,” and may be found most readily in the 4th volume of the last edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages. After giving some account of the dangers which Drake had surmounted in passing through the Straits of Magellan, which Davis had himself sailed through three times, he proceeds to say, that “after Sir Francis Drake was entered into the South Seas, he coasted all the western shores of America, until he came into the septentrional latitude of forty-eight degrees, being on the back side of Newfoundland.” Now Davis is certainly entitled to respectful attention, from his high character as a navigator. He had made three voyages in search of a north-west passage, and had given his name to Davis’ Straits, as the discoverer of them; he had likewise been the companion of Cavendish in his last voyage into the South Seas, in 1591–93, when, having separated from Cavendish, he discovered the Falkland islands. He was therefore highly competent to form a correct judgment of the value of the accounts which he had received respecting Drake’s voyage, nor was he likely, as a rival in the career of maritime discovery, to exaggerate the extent of it. We find him, on this occasion, deliberately adopting the account that Drake reached that portion of the north-west coast of America, which corresponded to Newfoundland on the north-east coast, or, as he distinctly says, the septentrional latitude of 48 degrees.
Davis, however, is not the only naval authority of that period who adopted this view, for Sir William Monson, who was admiral in the reign of Elizabeth and James I., and served in expeditions against the Spaniards under Drake, in his introduction to Sir Francis Drake’s voyage round the world, praises him because “lastly and principally that after so many miseries and extremities he endured, and almost two years spent in unpractised seas, when reason would have bid him sought home for his rest, he left his known course, and ventured upon an unknown sea in forty-eight degrees, which sea or passage we know had been often attempted by our seas, but never discovered.” And in his brief review of Sir F. Drake’s voyage round the world, he says: “From the 16th of April to the 5th of June he sailed without seeing land, and arrived in forty-eight degrees, thinking to find a passage into our seas, which land he named Albion.” (Sir W. Monson’s Naval Tracts, in Churchill’s Collection of Voyages, vol. iii., pp. 367, 368.)
Mr. Greenhow (p. 75) says, that Davis’s assertion carries with it its own refutation, “as it is nowhere else pretended that Drake saw any part of the west coast of America between the 17th degree of latitude and the 38th.” But surely Davis might use the expression, “coasted all the western shores of America,” without being supposed to pretend that Drake kept in sight of the coast all the way. The objection seems to be rather verbal than substantial. Again, Sir W. Monson is charged by the same author with inconsistency, because he speaks of C. Mendocino as the “furthest land discovered,” and the “furthermost known land.” But Sir W. Monson is on this occasion discussing the probable advantages of a north-west passage as a saving of distance, and he is speaking of C. Mendocino, as the “furthermost known part of America,” i.e., the furthermost headland from which a course might be measured to the Moluccas, and he is likewise referring especially to the voyage of Francisco Gali, so that this objection is more specious than solid. It should likewise not be forgotten, that in the most approved maps of that day, in the last edition of Ortelius, for example, and in that of Hondius, which is given in Purchas’s Pilgrims, C. Mendocino is the northernmost point of land of North America. It may also not be amiss to remark, that in the map which Mr. Hallam (in his Literature of Europe, vol. ii., c. viii., § v.) justly pronounces to be the best map of the sixteenth century, and which is one of uncommon rarity, Cabo Mendocino is the last headland marked upon the north-west coast of America, in about 43° north latitude. This map is found with a few copies of the edition of Hakluyt of 1589: in other copies, indeed, there is the usual inferior map, in which C. Mendocino is placed between 50° and 60°. The work, however, in which it has been examined for the present purpose, is Hakluyt’s edition of 1600, in which it is sometimes found with Sir F. Drake’s voyage traced out upon it: but in the copy in the Bodleian Library, no such voyage is observed; whilst the line of coast is continued above C. Mendocino and marked, in large letters, “Nova Albion.” Thus Hakluyt himself, in adopting this map as “a true hydrographical description of so much of the world as hath been hitherto discovered and is common to our knowledge,” has so far