256 DISCOVERIES OF 1668. 



that while on this service the ship had been driven 

 away with the ice by a storm from her anchorage, 

 and had never returned. This part of the story 

 seems to rest on the authority of M. Jeremie, the 

 o'overnor of Port Nelson, after it had fallen into 

 the hands of the French ; but, whether true or false, 

 it appears to have given rise to one of those inge- 

 nious fabrications which were frequently the 

 means of keeping alive a spirit of discovery when 

 otherwise it might probably have died away. The 

 fabrication alluded to is the account of a Spanish 

 expedition from the South Sea, through the interior 

 of America, by means of rivers and lakes, into the 

 Northern Atlantic. It first appeared in an English 

 dress, and in an English periodical publication, 

 called The Monthly Miscellany, or, Memoirs for the 

 Curious, for the month of April, in the year 1708. 

 The name of the Admiral, selected for the com- 

 mander of this expedition, was De Fonte, a name 

 mentioned by the burgomaster Witsen, as being 

 celebrated for a voyage to Terra del Fuego, made 

 in 1640, at the cost of the King of Spain. This 

 admiral, passing up the gulf of California, dis- 

 patches one Barnarda up a fair river into a lake full 

 of islands, which he names Valasco, where he left 

 his ship and proceeded several hundred leagues in 

 large Indian canoes, called Periagos. At the same 

 time the admiral got into the Lake£e//e, and, passing 

 throuo-h a strait to the eastward, came to an Indian 

 town, where he learnt that at a little distance from 



