The great Commonwealth of California, with its fabulous resources and boundless possibilities, is today the richer because of the expansive character and stimulating example of its pioneer princes. Few, indeed, are the Argonauts that now remain on this side of the "Great Divide" to answer the roll-call of the Fortyniners. Yet a little while, and the inconspicuous notices that now and again record the "death of a forty-niner" or the "passing of a California pioneer," will have wholly and forever disappeared from the surfeited columns of our newspapers.

Is it not meet and befitting then that a group of historical students and instructors of youth should pause in renewed contemplation of the historical heritage that is ours, with the earnest thought of a fuller entrance thereinto in the future? The favored sons of California may well heed a wise remark of Arnold of Rugby: "The harvest gathered in the fields of the past is to be brought home for the use of the present."

Therefore do we pay humble and reverent tribute to that honorable body of frontiersmen, sturdy, strong-fibred, princely pioneers. "I have no word to speak their praise. Theirs was the deed: the guerdon ours. The wilderness and weary days

Were theirs alone: for us the flowers."

-A. J. Waterhouse.

To the sons of such as these, and dwellers in happiness in the Golden Land they have bequeathed ours is a heritage dearly to be prized and a never-failing inspiration.

DRAKE ON THE PACIFIC COAST

PROFESSOR JAMES MAIN DIXON.

The personality of Francis Drake, the great sea-captain of the age of Queen Elizabeth, has a perennial fascination for all who speak the English language. As much as any other man, he made it a world tongue; for it is the supremacy of Britain upon the ocean which has led to her colonial activity and imperial influence. And to this supremacy Drake was no slight contributor. As long as he lived he was the terror of the Spaniards afloat, and the close of his life saw the definite transfer of naval superiority from the Iberian peninsula to the British isles. France and Holland had still to be reckoned with, it is true, during the next two centuries; but neither of these countries had ever the same overshadowing power as Spain and Portugal combined in the years preceding the Great Armada.

When Drake set out on his world voyage, the crowns of Spain and Portugal had not yet been united; but the union was complete ere he returned in triumph. Keen as was the national rivalry between Portuguese and Spanish navigators and adventurers, yet in face of heretics like Drake they were at one in antagonism. Drake was always regarded as a pirate and an outlaw. Had not the arbiter of Europe, the Roman pontiff, divided the pagan world into two political hemispheres, giving the Eastern to the Portuguese and the Western to the Spanish? There was no room anywhere for rebel Hollanders nor for pirate Englishmen. The boldness of Drake, therefore, in setting out to cross two oceans, having nothing but hostile ports to touch at, may well astonish us. Nor had he a completely loyal crew. During the months he spent on the South American coast, south of Buenos Ayres, waiting for the southern spring ere he ventured into Pacific waters, he had to condemn and execute one of his ship captains, Thomas Doughty. The summary act caused a good deal of adverse criticism at the time; and had he not returned crowned with laurels, he might have been called to account and punished. The tragedy took place at Fort St. Julian, where Magellan had also wintered, and where he had to deal summarily with mutinous subordinates. The most recent historical atlas published, that of Professor Shepherd of Columbia University (Holt & Company), does not make Drake touch at this harbor. Again, after passing through the Straits of Magellan, Drake was unable to proceed northward owing to foul weather, which drove

him towards the South Pole. Consequently it may be claimed that he was the first European to behold the rugged promontory of Cape Horn. It was not until the year 1616, or nearly twenty years later, that a Hollander gave it its current name. But in September, 1578, Drake reports that "The uttermost cape or headland of all these islands stands near in 56 degrees, without (i. e. beyond) which there is no main nor island to be seen to the southwards, but that the Atlantic Ocean and the South Sea meet in a larger and fuller scope." Professor Shepherd again fails to register this involuntary cruise to the south, although it means so much in the story of discovery.

In his voyage northward along the west coast of South America, Drake showed great judgment and excellent seamanship; moreover he was seemingly favored by fortune in getting winds and weather that suited. The Spaniards were taken unawares, not expecting so deadly an enemy in these far-off waters; and the Englishman made full use of his opportunities. When he came to Callao, the port of Peru, he was definitely within what we may call the zone of Panama activity. To Panama was carried the metal treasure of Peru; it was the entrepot of merchandise along the whole Pacific coast. Drake's policy was to avoid any regular sea fight, as his single vessel was no match for one or more Spanish galleons prepared for battle. When he first appeared off Callao, it was presumed that the Golden Hind was a piratical Spaniard, manned by a crew that had mutinied. No one dreamed that the little English vessel had dared the perils and intricacies of the Straits of Magelian and had ventured into these remote seas. When the fact was realized the viceroy at Lima hurried down from the capital with an armed force, and got in readiness two armed vessels with four hundred fighting men on board. With such an equipment they never doubted that the English pirate would be overpowered and captured. But unfortunately they did not take sufficient care with the commissariat, and in the resulting stern chase-which is a long chase-which Drake gave them, their provisions failed and they had to return to port.

The fleet of three vessels under the command of Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, which was finally dispatched, was unable to catch up with the Golden Hind, and as a last resort sailed south to the Straits of Magellan, to await Drake there on his return home. The Spaniards never doubted that Drake would go back to England by the way he had come. But he himself had two alternatives, of which he chose the second. The first was to proceed northward along the western coast of the American continent, and find the Northwest passage that was supposed to exist between the Columbia river and the St. Lawrence as we know them today.

The fear that English or French navigators would find such a passage and swoop down on the Pacific galleons of Spain from the north, had a definite effect on the policy of Philip the Second, who at one time contemplated the invasion of Japan so as to dominate the further side of the ocean. It was a general mistake at the time to underestimate the distance between the littorals, and to suppose that Japan was quite close to what is now the state of Oregon. Drake as we shall see, actually made the attempt to discover these Straits of Anian, as they were called, but was balked by inclement weather. Thereafter his best policy seemed to be the continuation of his westward trip by which, to use his own phrase, he "encompassed the world."

Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa was so impressed with the danger of leaving the Straits of Magellan unguarded that he used all his efforts to have a colony planted on its shores as a Spanish garrison. His royal master listened favorably to his arguments, and three years later a powerful armament sailed from Spain. It had ill-success from the start. After losing five out of the twentythree ships in an Atlantic gale soon after putting to sea, it had to return to port to refit. In fact, two years spent at Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere south of the line were to pass ere Sarmiento landed the survivors of the expedition on these Patagonian shores. Two cities about seventy miles apart were laid out, San Felipe and Nombre de Jesus, in favorable points of the Strait, and it appeared that at last something solid would be accomplished. But the winter set in with uncommon severity; they ran short of provisions; and Sarmiento,* who went off to Chili in search of these, was unable to return. Philip finally lost all interest in the ill-starred project, and these poor adventurers were left to starve and die. In 1587 the English navigator Thomas Cavendish found less than a score of miserable beings who were dragging out an existence by picking up shell-fish and plucking herbs. They were even too weak to bury their dead comrades who lay within the huts. These ghosts were all who remained of four hundred and thirty men and women who had landed with high expectations of founding a new empire.

Sarmiento had gone on the wrong track to capture Francis Drake. After looting the port of Callao, and escaping by great good luck from the three vessels who followed him rashly, the Englishman pressed on northward in the wake of a rich galleon, which his prisoners had described as bound for Panama. On February 24th, 1579, they crossed the line, with the Cacafuego, or Spitfire, as the galleon was named, still unsighted. But on March 1st, Drake's brother John discovered it from the masthead, thus

*He was captured by Sir Walter Raleigh.

securing the reward offered by the commander to the lucky seaman who should be the first to report a ship ahead. The captain of the Cacafuego was ready to give the newcomers a welcome. He had expected no unfriendliness, and possessed no defensive armor to repel an attack. Ere he discovered his mistake his vessel was within the range of Drake's guns, and it was impossible to escape. Yet the brave Biscayan did not surrender till the mizzenmast of the Cacafuego was shot away, and he himself had been wounded by an arrow. It was a rich prize for the English privateer. The gold, silver, and precious gems in the hold amounted to no less than threequarters of a million in our money. The capture took place on the first day of March, 1579, off Cape San Francisco in Equador.

With so much booty on board, and the inclement season about to set in to the south, Drake felt that the Straits of Magellan route was closed to him. In Shepherd's Historical Atlas he is made to put in at Panama, an evident mistake, for Panama was a fortified city, where he would have had the odds entirely against him. The first move was to find a retired and convenient anchorage where he could water and refit. Their evident route was northward, towards the entrance of the reported passage which would take them back eastward to England. Such an anchorage was found off the coast of Costa Rica, in a small bay of the island of Canno.1 Here they were north of Panama and close to the route of vessels making for that port. With the pinnace they were able to capture a boat laden with honey, butter, sarsaparilla and other commodities, and having on board letters from the King of Spain to the governor of the Philippines, as well as sea charts which were to prove of particular value to them later on. They also captured a vessel containing linen cloths, China silk and porcelain, goods that had come across the Pacific in the Manila galleon and had been transshipped. This was the last vessel they met on all the coast.

By the 24th of March they were again at sea, heading for California. They put in at the Mexican port of Guatulco2 in the province of Oajaca, where they got some booty, laid in more provisions, and left on shore the Portuguese pilot, Nuño da Silva, who had been with them since his capture in the Cape Verde Islands, early in the long voyage. He reported the details of the fourteen months he had spent with the English "pirate" to the Viceroy of New Spain, and this "relation" is available for us today, and makes highly interesting reading.

By the 16th of April they were free to sail for home. Although in the "Famous Voyage" narration in the Hakluyt Series, Vol. VIII.,

1 Cano Island, 8 deg. 40 min. N. lat., 84 deg. W. long.; close to Point Llereno. 2 Guatulco or Huatulco, 15 deg. 8 min. N. lat.; 96 deg. 30 min. W. long.