VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. II 



judicious plan, and their discoveries being left im- 

 perfect without immediate settlement, or subsequent 

 examination, and scarcely recorded in any well- 

 authenticated or accurate narrations, had been al- 

 most forgot ; or were so obscurely remembered, as 

 only to serve the purpose of producing perplexing 

 debates about their situation and extent ; if not to 

 suggest doubts about their very existence. 



It seems, indeed, to have become a very early 

 object of policy in the Spanish councils, to discon- 

 tinue and to discourage any farther researches in 

 that quarter. Already masters of a larger empire on 

 the continent of America than they could conve- 

 niently govern, and of richer mines of the precious 

 metals on that continent than they could convert 

 into use, neither avarice nor ambition furnished rea- 

 sons for aiming at a fresh accession of dominions. 

 And thus, though settled all along the shores of this 

 ocean, in a situation so commodious for prosecuting 

 discoveries throughout its wide extent, the Spaniards 

 remained satisfied with a coasting intercourse be- 

 tween their own ports ; never stretching across the 

 vast gulph that separates that part of America from 

 Asia, but in an unvarying line of navigation ; per- 

 haps in a single annual ship, between Acapulco and 

 Manilla. 



The tracks of other European navigators of the 

 South Pacific Ocean, were, in a great measure, regu- 

 lated by those of the Spaniards ; and consequently 

 limited within the same narrow bounds. With the 

 exception, perhaps, of two instances only, those of 

 Le Maire and lloggewein, no ships of another nation 

 had entered this sea, through the Strait of Magal- 

 haens, or round Cape Horn, but for the purposes of 

 clandestine trade with the Spaniards, or of open hos- 

 tility against them : purposes which could not be an- 

 swered, without precluding any probable chance of 

 adding much to our stock of discovery. For it was 

 obviously incumbent on all such adventurers, to con- 



