116 VOYAGE OF JUAN PEREZ. [1774. 



represented, in the journal of Friar Pena, as having lighter complex- 

 ions than other aborigines of America; like those farther north, 

 they were clad in skins, their hats being, however, made of rushes, 

 curiously plaited and painted, of a conical shape, with a knob on the 

 top. To the surprise of the Spaniards, they had many knives, 

 arrow-points, and other articles, of iron and copper, though it did 

 not appear that they had held any intercourse with civilized people. 

 To this bay Perez gave the name of Port San Lorenzo, in honor 

 of the saint on whose day it was first seen ; it is undoubtedly the 

 same which, four years afterwards, received, from Captain Cook, 

 the appellation of King George's or Nooika Sound. The point 

 north-west of its entrance, called, by the Spaniards, Cape Santa 

 Clara, is the Woody Point of the English ; and the other point — 

 the Cape San Estevan of Perez — corresponds precisely, in situa- 

 tion and all other particulars, as described, with the Point Breakers 

 of the English navigator. 



From Port San Lorenzo, the Spaniards sailed along the coast 

 southward ; and, in the latitude of 47 degrees 47 minutes, they 

 beheld, at a distance in the interior, on the east, a lofty mountain, 

 covered with snow, which they named Sierra de Santa Rosalia — 

 probably the Mount Olympus of the English maps. Martinez, the 

 pilot of the Santiago, many years after, thought proper to remem- 

 ber that he had also observed, between the 48th and the 49th 

 parallels, a wide opening in the land, and that he had given his own 

 name to the point on the south side of its entrance. Of this 

 observation no note appears in the journals of the voyage; yet, 

 upon the strength of the tardy recollection of the pilot, his country- 

 men have claimed for him the merit of rediscovering the Strait of 

 Juan de Fuca, and have affixed the name of Cape Martinez, in 

 their charts, to the point of the continent where that passage joins 

 the Pacific. Continuing his voyage to the south, Perez, on the 21st 

 of August, passed in sight of Cape Mendocino, the true latitude of 

 which he first determined ; and, on the 27th, he arrived at Mon- 

 terey, whence he, after some time, went on to San Bias. 



In this voyage, the first made by the Spaniards along the north- 

 west coasts of America after 1603, very little was learned, except 

 that there was land, on the eastern side of the Pacific, as far north 

 as the latitude of 54 degrees. The government of Spain, perhaps, 

 acted wisely in concealing the accounts of the expedition, which 

 reflected little honor on the courage or the science of its navigators ; 

 but it has thereby deprived itself of the means of establishing 



