The Discovery by Spain 241 
This claim of Spain dated back 277 years prior to 1790, or 382 
years ago, the inceptive right being based by some on the alleged 
discovery of the Pacific ocean by Balboa in 1513, when he as- 
sumed possession of it as a private sea in the name and for the 
benefit of the Spanish crown; but this claim had slight grounds, 
indeed no really good grounds of support, though it was greatly 
strengthened from time to time by the navigation of its coasts 
and the occupation of its territory by Spanish navigators, Mal- 
donado in 1528 and Farrelo in 1548. In 1592 San Juan de Fuca, 
a Greek navigator in the Spanish service, entered the strait bear- 
ing his name, which now separates the United States from the 
British possessions. He then for a time supposed he had dis- 
covered the great northwestern passage connecting the two 
oceans. In 1774 the navigator Captain Juan Peres sailed from 
San Blas January 25, landing first on the northeastern coast of 
Queen Charlotte island near the fifty-fourth parallel. Humboldt 
says he was the first of all European navigators to anchor in 
Nootka sound, in latitude 49° 30’. This he named Port San 
Lorenzo; four years later it was by Captain Cook called King 
George’ssound. Heceta.a Spanish navigator, visited and landed 
on the coast in 1775, and Galiano and Valdes in 1792; that they 
explored the entire Oregon coast, and even farthernorthward, is 
an historical fact which cannot be questioned. 
Prior to 1790 the claim of Spain to this vast territory was not 
seriously disputed by any power, although Great Britain had 
been feebly making a claim scarcely less ancient though based on 
a more fragile and less defensible title. This claim on the part 
of Great Britain rested originally (although subsequently that 
source of title was virtually abandoned) on the acts, familiar to 
all, of Sir Francis Drake, the English buccaneer and filibuster, 
who, in 1577, with five armed vessels, had sailed from England, 
with the connivance of Queen Elizabeth, ostensibly for a voyage 
to Egypt, but in fact on a filibustering expedition against Spain. 
Two years later Gn 1579), having reached the waters of the Pa- 
cific ocean through the strait of Magellan, his fleet encountered 
storms, reducing it to one schooner of an hundred tons burden 
and his naval force to sixty men. Just how far Drake sailed 
northward along the California and Oregon coast is a matter 
of doubt, some historians asserting he went as far as 42°, others 
43°, and some as far as 48°. All agree, however, that, having 
encountered storms, he returned to the thirty-eighth parallel 
