CHAPTER II 



THE DISCOVERIES OF CABRILLO AND VIZCAINO 



IT is my private opinion that the Japanese dis- 

 covered the Channel Islands — or it may have 

 been the Chinese — though this is rank heresy 

 in California, as Cabrillo is the patron saint of dis- 

 covery. I cannot forget a map of the Pacific Ocean, 

 which Professor A. S. Bickmore (the founder of the 

 American Museum of Natural History) made some 

 years ago, in which he displayed the latitude and longi- 

 tude of the Chinese junks which had been blown off- 

 shore and picked up during heavy gales in recent years. 

 They were located all over the Pacific, some very near 

 our shores. The record could not have been over 

 fifty years old, so I assume that the Chinese, Japanese, 

 and others, have been in the habit of being blown off- 

 shore for ages, and that many reached this country 

 in this way, or by the Aleutian Islands, and may have 

 been the forefathers of the Indians of this coast, not 

 to speak of the Eskimos. If one has the opportunity, 

 it is interesting to compare a mixed lot of Japanese 

 faces with Eskimos, and a similar collection of Chinese 

 coolie (Canton) faces with those of our west coast 

 Indians. The comparison is suggestive, if it has no 

 other value. 



But whether the Chinese or the Japanese discovered 

 the islands, the Spanish, the splendid voyageurs of the 

 last centuries, claim it, and Captain Juan Rodriguez 



8 



