92 VIZCAINO REACHES MONTEREY. [1603. 



tion of Port San Diego. There Vizcaino received accounts, from 

 the natives, of people residing in the interior^ who had beards, 

 wore clothes, and dwelt in cities ; but he could learn no further 

 particulars, and was, upon the whole, inclined to believe that, 

 unless the Indians were deceiving him, these people must be the 

 Spaniards recently settled in New Mexico, on the River Bravo del 

 Norte. 



Having minutely surveyed Port San Diego, the Spaniards quitted 

 it on the 1st of December, and sailed through the Archipelago 

 of Santa Barbara, in one of the islands of which Cabrillo died 

 sixty years previous ; then doubling the Cape de Galera of that 

 navigator, to which they gave the name of Cape Conception, now 

 borne by it, they anchored, in the middle of the month, in a 

 spacious and secure harbor, near the 37th parallel, where they 

 remained some time, engaged in refitting their vessels and obtaining 

 a supply of water. This harbor — the Port of Pines of Cabrillo — 

 was named Port Monterey by Vizcaino, in honor of the viceroy of 

 Mexico ; and as, before reaching it, sixteen of the crews of the 

 vessels had died, and many of the others were incapable of duty 

 from disease, it was determined that Corvan, the admiral, should 

 return to Mexico in his ship, carrying the invalids, with letters to the 

 viceroy, urging the immediate establishment of colonies and garrisons 

 at San Diego and Monterey. Corvan, accordingly, on the 29th, 

 sailed for Acapulco, where he arrived after a long and perilous 

 voyage, with but few of his men alive ; whilst Vizcaino, with his 

 ship and the fragata, prosecuted their exploration along the coast 

 towards the north. 



On the 3d of January, 1603, after the departure of Corvan, 

 Vizcaino, accompanied by the small vessel under Aguilar, quitted 

 Monterey ; but, ere proceeding much farther north, they were 

 driven back by a severe gale, in the course of which the two 

 vessels were separated. The ship took refuge in the Bay of San 

 Francisco, which seems to have been then well known ; and search 

 was made for the wreck of the San Augustin, which had been there 

 lost, as already mentioned, in 1595, during her voyage from the 

 Philippine Islands to Acapulco. Finding no traces of that vessel, 

 Vizcaino again put to sea ; and, passing a promontory, which he sup- 

 posed to be Cape Mendocino, he, on the 20th of January, reached 

 a high, white bluff, in latitude, as ascertained by solar observation, 

 of 42 degrees, which, in honor of the saint of that day, was named 

 Cape San Sebastian. By this time, few of his men were fit for 



