248 California and the North-west Coast. 



The second and third of these novelties the straits we 

 have mentioned running X.X.K. were mapped out by 

 Delisle from the descriptions contained in a printed account 

 in English of a voyage by a Spanish admiral in 1640. 



This account had first been published in 1708, in a peri- 

 odical called the Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs forth* 

 Curious. Admiral De Fonte in this narration tells his 

 own story : lie narrates that in the year lt!4T he sailed 

 from Callao in Peru, accompanied by Capt. Bernardo in 

 a second ship, under orders to intercept ships from Boston 

 in N.E., which were in search of a north-west passage, 

 and that at latitude 53°, Bernardo left time and traced 

 the coast still farther north. Bernardo in latitude 61° as- 

 cended a river to 79°, whence one of his men went near to 

 the head of Davis's strait and found there was no passage 

 by water. When he rejoined De Fonte, the latter had re- 

 turned from his extraordinary voyage through straits and 

 lakes to the town of Gonasset: where leaving hie ship, 

 and ascending a river near Hudson's hay, he came to a 

 ship from Boston, Capt. Shapley, and conversed with him 

 and its owner, Mr. Seymour Gibbons. This ship was trad- 

 ing for skins in a port of Hudson's hay. 1 The Admiral's 

 conclusions were that there was no water communication 

 to either of these hays, and he returned home with this 

 report. This Boston ship must have left Boston within 

 ten years from the founding of the Massachusetts colony. 

 The names of Shapley and Gibbons were Boston names. 

 This alleged voyage of De Fonte in 1640 was so well 

 accredited, that Dobbs made it the basis of an argument in 

 1744 to the British government for the certainty of a passage 

 west through Hudson's bay : Ellis sustained it in 1748, 



1 This voyage from Boston is not the only one spoken of from independent 

 authority ; t'"r at ahoul the same period, | Ellis p, 71 1 Jeremie speaks of an- 

 other ship's crew from Boston having been mel with, whom some inferred 

 might have l" en those spoken of by De Fonte. 



