The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery. Travers Twiss
edition of the Famous Voyage, making the southern limit 55° south, and the northern 42° north, which Hakluyt has himself rejected in his later edition. There can be little doubt that Camden’s account bears internal evidence of having been copied in the main from Hakluyt. Purchas, as we may gather from his work, merely followed Hakluyt.
In addition to these, Mr. Greenhow enumerates several comparatively recent authors as adopting Hakluyt’s opinion. Of these, perhaps Dr. Johnson has the greatest renown. He published a life of Drake in parts, in five numbers of the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1740–41. It was, however, amongst his earliest contributions, when he was little more than thirty years of age, and therefore is not entitled to all the weight which the opinion of Dr. Johnson at a later period of life might carry with it. But as it is, the passage, as it stands at present, seems to involve a clerical error. “From Guatulco, which lies in 15° 40′, they stood out to sea, and without approaching any land, sailed forward till on the night following the 3d of June, being then in the latitude of 38°, they were suddenly benumbed with such cold blasts that they were scarcely able to handle the ropes. This cold increased upon them, as they proceeded, to such a degree that the sailors were discouraged from mounting upon deck; nor were the effects of the climate to be imputed to the warmth of the regions to which they had been lately accustomed, for the ropes were stiff with frost, and the meat could scarcely be conveyed warm to the table. On June 17th they came to anchor in 38° 30′.”
In the original paper, as published in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January, 1741, Dr. Johnson writes 38° in numbers as the parallel of latitude where the cold was felt so acutely. This would be in a far lower latitude than what any of the accounts of Drake’s own time gives; so that it may for that reason alone be suspected to be an error of the press, more particularly as Drake is made ultimately to anchor in 38° 30′, a higher latitude than that in which his crew were benumbed with the cold. We must either suppose that Dr. Johnson entirely misunderstood the narrative, and intentionally represented Drake as continuing his voyage northward in spite of the cold, and anchoring in a higher latitude than where his men were so much discouraged by its severity, or that there is a typographical error in the figures. The latter seems to be the more probable alternative; and if, in order to correct this error, we may reasonably have recourse to the authority from which he derived his information as to the latitude of the port where Drake cast anchor, it is to the World Encompassed, and not to the Famous Voyage, that we must refer; for it is the World Encompassed which gives us 38° 30′ as the latitude of the convenient and fit harbour, whereas the Famous Voyage sends Drake into a fair and good bay in 38°.
The dispute between Spain and Great Britain respecting the fur trade on the north-west coast of America having awakened the attention of the European powers to the value of discoveries in that quarter, a French expedition was in consequence despatched in 1790, under Captain Etienne Marchand, who, after examining some parts of the north-west coast of America, concluded the circumnavigation of the globe in 1792. Fleurieu, the French hydrographer, published a full account of Marchand’s Voyage, to which he prefaced an introduction, read before the French Institute in July, 1797. In this introduction he reviews briefly the course of maritime discovery in these parts, and states his opinion, without any qualification, that Sir Francis Drake made the land on the north-west coast of America in the latitude of 48 degrees, which no Spanish navigator had yet reached. Mr. Greenhow (p. 223) speaks highly of Fleurieu’s work, though he considers him to have been careless in the examination of his authorities. He observes, that “his devotion to his own country, and his contempt for the Spaniards and their government, led him frequently to make assertions and observations at variance with truth and justice.” It may be added, that at the time when he composed his introduction, the relations of France and Great Britain were not of a kind to dispose him to favour unduly the claims of British navigators.
The same train of events which terminated in the Nootka Convention, led to a Spanish expedition under Galiano and Valdés, of which an account was published, by order of the king of Spain, at Madrid, in 1802. The introduction to it comprises a review of all the Spanish voyages of discovery along the north-west coast, in the course of which it is observed, that, from want of sufficient information in Spanish history, certain foreign writers had undervalued the merit of Cabrillo, by assigning to Drake the discovery of the coast between 38° and 48°; whereas, thirty-six years before Drake’s appearance on that coast, Cabrillo had discovered it between 38° and 43°. A note appended to this passage states:—“The true glory which the English navigator may claim for himself is the having discovered the portion of coast comprehended between the parallels of 43° and 48°; to which, consequently, the denomination of New Albion ought to be limited, without interfering with the discoveries of preceding navigators.” (Relacion del Viage hecho por las Goletas Sutil y Mexicana en el año de 1792. Introduccion, pp. xxxv. xxxvi.)
To the same purport, Alexander von Humboldt, in his Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, says:—“D’après des données historiques certaines, la dénomination de Nouvelle Albion devrait être restreinte à la partie de la côte qui s’étend depuis les 43° aux 48°, ou du Cap de Martin de Aguilar, à l’entrée de Juan de Fuca,” (l. iii., c. viii.) And in another passage: “On trouve que Francisco Gali côtoya une partie de l’Archipel du Prince de Galles ou celui du Roi George (en 1582.) Sir Francis Drake, en 1578, n’était parvenu que jusqu’aux 48° de latitude au nord du cap Grenville, dans la Nouvelle Georgie.”
The question of the northern limits of Drake’s expedition has been rather fully entered into on this occasion, because it is apprehended that Drake’s visit constituted a discovery of that portion of the coast which was to the north of the furthest headland which Ferrelo reached in 1543, whether that headland were Cape Mendocino, or Cape Blanco; and because Mr. Greenhow, in the preface to the second edition of his History of Oregon and California, observes, that in the accounts and views there presented of Drake’s visit to the north-west coast, all who had criticised his work were silent, or carefully omitted to notice the principal arguments adduced by the author. We may conclude with observing, that on reviewing the evidence it will be seen, that in favour of the higher latitude of 48° we have a well authenticated account drawn up by the nephew of Sir Francis Drake himself, from the notes of several persons who went the voyage, confirmed by independent statements in two contemporary writers, Stow the annalist, and Davis the navigator, and supported by the authority of Sir W. Monson, who served with Drake in the Spanish wars after his return; and on this side we find ranked the influential judgment of the ablest modern writers who have given their attention to the subject, such as the distinguished French hydrographer Fleurieu, the able author of the Introduction to the Voyage of the Sutil and Mexicana, published by the authority of the king of Spain, and the learned and laborious Alexander von Humboldt. On the opposite side stands Hakluyt, and Hakluyt alone; for Camden and Purchas both followed Hakluyt implicitly, and though they may be considered to approve, they do not in any way confirm his account; while Hakluyt himself has nowhere disclosed his sources of information, and by the variation of the two editions of his work in the two most important facts of the whole voyage, namely, the extreme limits southward and northward respectively of Drake’s expedition, he has indirectly made evident the doubtful character of the information on which he relied, and has himself abandoned the version of the story, which Camden and the author of the Vie de Drach, have adopted upon his authority.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST COAST OF AMERICA.
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