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CHAPTER III. 

 1608 to 1768. 



The North- West Coasts of North America remain nearly neglected during the whole 

 of this Period — Efforts of the English and the Dutch to find new Passages into 

 the Pacific — Discovery of Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay — Discovery of the 

 Passage around Cape Horn — Establishment of the Hudson's Bay Trading Com- 

 pany — Endeavors of the Spaniards to settle California unsuccessful — The 

 Jesuits undertake the Reduction of California — Establishments of the Jesuits in 

 the Peninsula, and their Expulsion from the Spanish Dominions. 



For more than a hundred and sixty years after the death of 

 Vizcaino, no attempt was made, by the Spaniards, to form estab- 

 lishments on the west coast of California, or to extend their 

 discoveries in that part of America. 



Those countries, in the mean time, remained unknown, and 

 almost entirely neglected, by the civilized world. The Spanish 

 galleons, on their way from Manilla to Acapulco, annually passed 

 along the coasts south of Cape Mendocino, which were described 

 in Spanish works on the navigation of the Pacific ; and some spots, 

 farther north, were, as will be hereafter particularly shown, visited 

 by the Russians, in their exploring and trading voyages from Kamt- 

 chatka: but no new information, of an exact nature, was obtained 

 with regard to those regions, and they were represented on maps 

 according to the fancy of the geographer, or to the degree of 

 faith which he placed in the last fabrication respecting them. 

 Numerous were the stories, gravely related and published in France 

 and England, of powerful nations, of great rivers, of interior 

 seas, and of navigable passages connecting the Atlantic with the 

 Pacific, north of California. The most remarkable of these stories 

 is the account of the voyage of Admiral Fonte, already presented. 

 Captain Coxton, a veteran bucanier, who flourished in the latter 

 part of the seventeenth century, also declared that he had, in 1688, 

 sailed from the North Pacific, far eastward, into the American 

 continent, through a river which ran out of a great lake, called the 

 Lake of Thoyaga, containing many islands, inhabited by a numerous 



