DISCOVERIES OF CABRILLO AND VIZCAINO 9 



Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator in the service of 

 Spain, is accorded the honor, 



A number of years ago, some one was hunting over 

 the old manuscripts of a pubHc hbrary of Madrid, and, 

 with the very best of luck for a landsman, came upon 

 the log of Don Juan Cabrillo. He sent it to our 

 Government, hence I am able to quote some of it, or 

 that part relating to the alluring islands of the chan- 

 nels of Santa Barbara and Santa Catalina. Cabrillo 

 — who, to my knowledge, has not even a statuette in 

 California, much less a bust large enough to rest on a 

 pedestal, to the sorrow of some of the people — was a 

 gentleman of the sixteenth centuiy, who, in 1542, 

 accepted the service of his august majesty, Charles 

 of Castile and Aragon, and sailed for America, to add 

 by conquest, or peaceful acquirement, lands of any 

 kind, and souls. He reported to Don Antonio de 

 Mendoza, who was then Viceroy of New Spain, and 

 became one of the many believers in the mythical 

 "Straits of Anian," supposed to be far up the coast 

 and to lead the navigator around into the Atlantic. 



So firmly was this idea intrenched in the minds of 

 the navigators of that time, that it becomes more than 

 a suspicion that some data allied to fact must have 

 been behind it. We are prone to forget, in our theo- 

 rizing, that the earth is old, that man has lived tens 

 of thousands of years — millions, more than likely — 

 and that while the Pacific Coast was not known to the 

 Spaniards or the Britons, other nations had doubtless 

 sailed its waters, found Bering Strait, and wandered 

 into the Arctic and become Eskimos, countless ages 

 ago. And so the "Strait of Anian" idea may have 

 come down the ages, founded on Bering Strait. 



