California and the North-west Coast. 247 



Michael Locke, being what a Greek pilot, Jean De Fuca, 

 told him at Venice in the year 1596. De Fuca told Locke 

 that when he was in the Spauish employment in the Pacific 

 Ocean in the years 1592-3, he entered into the North or 

 Arctic sea through certain straits very near those we are 

 now agreed to call Juan De Fuca's straits, and found him- 

 self in this Sea of the West, the size of which he gave 

 very indefinitely. 



Delisle's brother had left manuscript maps of Western 

 America with this sea, stretching over 30 degrees of longi- 

 tude, which he had drawn in 1697, but did not publish till 

 1718, out of regard to the interests of France in Canada. 

 It was these maps which had led Joseph Delisle to re- 

 study the subject. They both believed that Hudson's bay 

 could be entered from this sea. Although De Fuca is now 

 generally regarded as a fabulist, still his Western sea re- 

 mained on maps up to at least as late as 1780. Tytler 

 says " the whole voyage of De Fuca rests upon apocryphal 

 authority." 



Notwithstanding this is the belief at present, still after 

 the discovery of a strait near where De Fuca had assigned 

 one, his name became affixed to it. Delisle made a most 

 thorough study of the existeuce of this sea of the west, 

 his investigations into all travels and voyages were most 

 minute and he attempted a most painful adjustment of it 

 with all other discoveries, both pretended and real. What 

 acuteness of judgment would have been ascribed to him, if 

 his elaborate reasonings, instead of having been confuted 

 with the lapse of time, had been authenticated. He had 

 studied Marquette, Hennepin, the Jesuit relations of New 

 France, and every available source of information. The 

 southern strait of entrance, Delisle derived from an account 

 in Viscayno's voyage of an entrance into this sea in latitude 

 43°. Coxe in his Carolana (1699) had said that he had dis- 

 covered a west sea several thousand miles in circumference. 



