250 California and (he North-west Coast. 



of Anian. It was a strait believed to be a passage by the 



ni'itli i'rom east to west, commencing in from fifty-five to 

 sixty degrees of latitude. Cortereal had Darned it in the 

 year 1500 : Ladrillero in 1504, M. Chack in 1579, and 



Maldonado in 1598, all pretended to have entered those 

 straits. Maldonado says that he sailed through it and 

 back again. De Fuca thought his straits were those of 

 Anian. Viscayno had been scut in 1602 to discover them. 

 Drake said that he had discovered them. Maldonado's 

 account which was the most detailed turned out to be sheer 

 invention. Even after Behring's straits had been disco- 

 vered, (Alaska being supposed to be an island and our 

 continent narrow on the north), the straits of Anian were 

 still searched for : and it was interred that Bernardo's orDe 

 Fonte's straits must be those of Anian. The discoveries 

 of the Russians were supposed to confirm the statements of 

 De Fonte. And even after the discoveries of Oapt. Cook, 

 and as late as 1791, the straits of Anian were songht for 

 by the Spaniards under Malaspina. 



Torquemada in his Monarquia Indiana (liv. v, cap. 45), 

 says that Philip II of Spain had determined to discover 

 the coasts of California, because certain foreigners had 

 reported that they had passed by the north-wesl passage to 

 the South sea by the straits of Anian, where they had seen 

 a great town, and therefore Viscayno was sent on the 

 enteq)rise. 



The final conclusion must be, that although we have in 

 Behring's straits, that which responds to the idea ofa water 

 communication to the Arctic ocean, yet that all the pre- 

 tended straits of Anian, were delusions of navigators or 

 inventions of others. 



Ten years after Delisle, in 1765, only one hundred and five 

 years since, Kngel, the Swiss geographer, published a volume 

 containing his studies on Western geography, accompanied 



