1841. J EXPEDITIONS OF COIITE3. 427 



trious discoverer, Mrr tie Corles — the Sea of Cortes — and 

 effected a landing at the modern port of La Paz. Shortly 

 after this, the Conqueror himself embarked with a squadron, 

 and planted a colony at the same place. His attempts to settle 

 the country, however, were unsuccessful, and the colonists 

 eventually returned to Mexico. In 1539, he dispatched an- 

 other expedition, under an officer by the name of Ulloa, who 

 sailed to the head of the Gulf, doubled the peninsula, and 

 ascended along the western coast, to the twenty-eighth or 

 twenty-ninth degree of north latitude, but was never after- 

 wards heard of. 



Nothing daunted by his ill success, Cortes projected still 

 another expedition; but his enterprise was now checked by 

 the viceroy Mendoza, whose mind had been inflamed by the 

 golden reports of an itinerant monk sent to convert the Indians 

 of Sonora, and who had penetrated far into the interior of 

 California. The viceroy claimed the right of discovery, and 

 Cortes appealed to the Emperor. The premature death of 

 Cortes, pending the appeal, put an end to all his ambitious 

 hopes, and, in a considerable degree, to the discoveries which 

 he and others had anticipated.* 



Various expeditions were subsequently undertaken, but 

 with little or no success. The energetic spirit of the great ad- 

 venturer and discoverer had died with him; ihe glittering 

 realms, where gold and precious stones were said to abound in 

 exhaustless profusion, were never reached; and the descend- 

 ants of the Conquid adores were obliged to content them- 

 selves with the far less valuable silver mines of Mexico. 



The pearl fisheries in the Gulf of California, however, were 

 soon made available, and formal possession of the peninsula 

 was taken by the Spanish authorities, in 1569. Not quite 

 fifty years later, the Jesuits established themselves in the 

 country, and gradually extended their missions to the north. 

 They were, no doubt, aware of the existence of gold and sil- 

 ver in California ; yet they dissuaded the Indians from digging 



* Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Vol. Ill, p. 333, ot seq. — GreeuhoVs History 

 of Oregon and California, p. 22, et seq. 



