98 PASSAGE AROUND CAPE HORN DISCOVERED. [1616. 



and gentlemen, styled — The Company of Adventurers of England 

 trading into Hudson's Bay — with the object,* expressed in the 

 charter, of encouraging the search for a northern passage to the 

 Pacific. 



The most important discovery made in the seventeenth century 

 was that of the open sea, south of Magellan's Strait, through which 

 the Dutch navigators Lemaire and Van Schouten sailed, in 1616, 

 from the Atlantic into the Pacific, around the island promontory 

 named by them Cape Horn, in honor of their native city in 

 Holland. By means of this new route, the perils and difficulties 

 of the navigation between the two oceans were so much lessened, 

 that voyages from Europe to the Pacific were no longer regarded 

 as very hazardous enterprises ; and the Spanish possessions and 

 commerce on that ocean were ever after annoyed by the armed 

 ships of nations at war with Spain, or by pirates and smugglers of 

 various classes and denominations. 



The Gulf of California became the principal resort of the Dutch 

 pirates, or, rather, privateers, who, under the name of Pichilingues,-\ 

 kept the inhabitants of the adjacent coasts of Mexico in constant 

 anxiety. For the purpose of dislodging these depredators, and also 

 of obtaining advantages from the pearl fishery in the gulf, several 

 attempts were made, by the government of Spain, and by individ- 

 uals in Mexico, to establish colonies, garrisons, and fishing or 

 trading posts, on the eastern side of the peninsula of California. 

 The details of the expeditions for these purposes, made by Vicuna 

 and Ortega in 1631, by Barriga and Porter in 1644, by Pihadero 

 in 1664 and 1667, by Lucenilla in 1668, and by Atondo in 1683, 

 are devoid of interest. Many pearls were obtained, among which 

 are some of the most valuable in the regalia of Spain ; but the 

 establishments all failed from want of funds, from the extreme 

 barrenness of the soil, and the determined hostility of the natives 

 of the peninsula, and, above all, from the indolence and viciousness 

 of the persons employed in the expeditions. In the last attempt 

 of this kind, under the direction of Don Isidro de Atondo, a number 

 of settlers, soldiers, and Jesuits, were carried out from Mexico, and 

 distributed at points on the gulf where the establishments were to 

 be formed ; but these stations were all abandoned before the end of 

 a year, and it was thereupon resolved, in a council of the chief 



* See Proofs and Illustrations, under the letter I, No. 1. 



t So called from the Bay of Pichilingue, on the east coast of the Californian 

 peninsula, which was the principal rendezvous of these Dutch pirates. 



