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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ntto I f , OUR KNOWLEDGE OF mtUmm and tbe itfttb-West €mi ONE HUNDUED YIGARS SINCE. BT HENRY A. HOMES, a.m., Librnriaii, N. Y. Hindi Lihriiiy. '2^C>f CoUeetiorv OUR KNOWLEDGE or €Mwnm mA tU §ttttti-Wt»i €0Ut ONE HUNDRED TEARS SINCE. READ BKFOItB THE ALBANY INSTITUTE, FEBUUAUy 15, 18TO, BT HENRY A. HOMES, a.m., Librarian, N. Y. State Library. ALBANY, N. Y.: JOEL MUNSELL 1870. (Siiilifanua and tht ^ovt\X'm»t (Sioul Our familiarity of late years with the geography, the products and the increasing population of the Western empire of the United States on the shores of the Pacific, makes the reflection seem the more astonishing that a cen- tury since, this coast was unknown and had hardly been touched y Euro- peans in all that great tract between California and Japan from the latitude of 38° to the Arctic circle." And in the same sentiment, Henrj' Ellis, writing the preface in 1748 to the voyage of the ships Dobbs and Cali- fornia says : •' there lies a tract of country making part of America from the "Welcome or Ne Ultra to cape Blanco in California, that is, from lat. 65° to 43° north, taking in 22 degrees of latitude and no less than thirty in longitude, having an extent of coast upwards of six hundred leagues, the coast of which wholly and the interior parts of it in a great measure remain unknown." And we see how mistaken he was in his suppositions as to the extent of this ignorance, seeing that the continent stretches west more than sixty degrees of longitude instead of thirty as he supposed. Dobbs drew his map four years before, run- ning an imaginary coast, starting from Hudson's bay lati- tude 63° and from longitude 95° directly south-west to Cape Blanco on the Pacific in longitude 35°, leaving room or space between America and Asia for a continent larger than New Holland, which new continent would on his theory embrace the Russian discoveries of 1741. 6 California and the Norlh-ioeat Coast. The reasons tor the neglect to make voyages of dis- covery to complete the coast outline of the new world, are not difficult to be found, notwithstanding each new discovery liad excited the admiration and had been a source of wealth to the old world. Tho principal reasons are the following: First: Spain, the only nation having territory on the south seas or Pacific, was fiutistied with the abundant ilow of wealth from her mines, and with annually dispatching ships laden with silver from Acapulco for the East India trade at the Piiilippines. These ships almost invariably followed the same route, sailing: on the same lines of latitude, rarely north of 15°. And they feared that the extension and spread of the news of discoveries would create for themselves, rivals in trade among the other powers of Europe. Second : The vessels of other powers that eutored the Pacific, went as buccaneers or privateers or for trade, and not for purposes of discovery; such were the voyages of Drake, Cavendish, Shelvocko, Van Noort and Spilbergen and the successful one of Anson in 1743. They were satis- tied in case they could fall upon the Spanish galleons laden with silver. Anson watched more than a year for the one which he captured with over a million and a half of dollars. Third: After the discovery of the passage around Cape Horn which was mainly favorable to the Spaniards and Portuguese, the English and Dutch flattered themselves with the hope of becoming most effectually their rivals, by a northern passage either to the west or east. They were especially sanguine of securing a passage by the west, on account of the universal persuasion that the new continent was narrow in its northern parts; and they de- voted themselves for centuries to securing a passage through Baffin's or Hudson's bays. As late as 1748, the »^ California and the North-west Coast. English were bnttlnsf thoir ships nguinst the ice in the western inlets of Hudson's bay, believing that they should come out into the vast Pacific due west or south-west, where we now find land stretching over fifty degrees of longitude. The name chosen for the ■^ft'p of 1749, the Cdlifornia^ indicates the region where the i^plorers hoped to emerge. So well convinced was the liritish govern- ment that the passage was throng' iludson's bay, that G J V '.)obb8 secured, at this late period, thar £20,000 should be voted to the one who should discover u passage through Hudson's bay to the Pacific. While master Briggs, as mentioned in Purchas (TTI, p. 851), was making use of the argument of the narrowness of the continent as a reason why the English should per- sist in making voyages by the north, the Spaniards at a very early period got out maps, on which the coast went steadily north-west by west from California for eighty de- grees of longitude to the fifty-fifth degree of latitude, for the purpose one would think of discouraging their rivals trom the attempts they were making. This fact appears plainly from the current maps which were published dur- ing the seventeenth century. Fourth: The English trading companies and those of other nations concealed their own acquired knowledge of the country, tmd discouraged rather than stimulated all at- tempts at discovery, except what they made for themselves, 80 as to secure the monopoly of the trade in furs. That this allegation is true is manifest T-om the writings of Dobbs, Middleton, Ellis, Barrow and others. Thus much we state concisely as the reasons t\)r the long continued ignorance of the north-west coast. I will now proceed to illustrate this ignorance and the extent to which credulity and speculation took the pliice of information, only a hundred years since, by exhibiting 8 California and the North-west Coast. the geographical views of Delisle, in 1752, and ofEngelin 1765. Joseph Nicolas Deliele, a member of the French Aca- demy, and distinguished as a geographer, had for 22 years lived at St. Petersburg as Astronomer of the government, and had accompanied the Russian expedition of 1741 which discovered the land which we now call Alaska. His elder brother. First Geographer of the king of France, was called the " creator of modern geography," and died in 1720. In 1750 Joseph Delisle presented to the French Academy a memoir illustrated with maps to explain after his rich ex- perience, his views of the geography of North- Western America. Several editions of it were published.* On these, maps, copies of which are in the State Library, he has drawn : First, a sea of the west, within tl:e interior of the continent, six hundred leagues in circumference, having on its shores the great city of Quivira, and communicat- ing with the Pacific ocean at two points. Second and third, two series of straits and lakes stretching towards Hudson's and Baffin's bays from the Pacific, running north- east by east. Fourth, the straits of Anian, communicating with the Arctic ocean. Delisle and his associate Buaehe, another distinguished geographer of that day, defend this map, by arguments which they thought convincing, during the four or five following years. The first novelty, the Sea of the West, he was led to h^- lieve in from an account to be found only in Purchas His Pilgrimes (HI, 849), which was from the pen of one * NouvoUcs cartes des dt'couvertcs de I' Arairal De Ftmte, et antres uaviga- teurs Espasnols, Portujjais, Anglois, HoUandois, Framjols ot Russes dans los mors septcntrionales, avec leur exi)lication. Par M. De Lislo. A Paris, 1753, 4to. Considtjrations geojrraphiciucs ot pliyHiques sur les nouvelhis decouvertes Nord de la jj^rande luer du Sud, avoc des cartes . . .Par P. Buadip. A Paris, 1753. 4to. QiUfornia and the North-west Coast. 9 Michael Locke, being what a Greek pilot, Jean De Fuca, told him at Venice in the 3'ear 1596. De Fuca told Locke that when he was in the Spanish employment in the Pacific Ocean in the years 1592-3, he entered into the North or Arctic sea through certain straits very near those we are now agreed to call Juan De Fuca's straits, and found him- self in this Sea of the West, the size of which he gave very indefinitely. Delisle's brother had left manuscript maps of Western America with this sea, stretching over 30 degrees of longi- tude, wh'ch he had drawn in 1697, but did not publish till 1718, out of regard to the interests of France in Canada. It was these maps which had led Joseph Delisle to re- study the subject. They both believed that Hudson's bay could be entered iVom this sea. Although De Fuca is now generally regarded as a fabulist, still his Western sea re- mained on maps up to at least as late as 1780. Tytler says " the whole voyage of De Fuca rests upon apocryphal authority." Notwithstanding this is the belief at present, still after the discovery of a strait near where De Fuca had assigned one, his name became affixed to it. Delisle made a most thorough study of the existence of this sea of the west, his investigations into all travels and voyages were most minute and he attempted a most painful adjustment of it with all other discoveries, both pretended and real. What acuteness of judgment would have been ascribed to him, if his elaborate reasonings, instead of having been confuted with the lapse of time, had been authenticated. He had studied Marquette, Hennepin, the Jesuit relations of New France, and every available source of information. The southern strait of entrance, Delisle derived from an account in Viscayno's voyage of an entrance into thisseaiii latitude 48°. Coxe in his Carolana (1699) had said that he had dis- covered a west sea several thousand miles in circumference. 10 California and the North-west Coast. The second and third of these novelties the straits we have mentioned running N.N.E, were mapped out by Delisle from the descriptions contained in a printed account in English of a voyage by a Spanish admiral in 1640. This account had first been published in 1708, in a peri- odical called the Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious. Admiral De Fonte in this narration tells his own story : He narrates that in the year 1647 he sailed from Callao in Peru, accompanied by Capt. Bernardo in a second ship, under orders to intercept ships from Boston in N.E., which were in search of a north-v/est passage, and that at latitude 53°, Bernardo left time and traced the coast still farther north. Bernardo in latitude 61° as- cended a river to 79°, whence one of his men went near to the head of Davis's strait and found there was no passage by water. When he rejoined De Fonte, the latter had re- turned from his extraordinary voyage through straits and lakes to the town of Conasset: where leaving his ship, and ascending a river near Hudson's bay, he came to a ship from Boston, Capt. Shapley, and conversed with him and its owner, Mr. Seymour Gibbons. This ship was trad- ing for skins in a port of Hudson's bay.' The Admiral's conclusions were that there was no water communication to either of these bays, and he returned home with this report. This Boston ship must have left Boston within ten years from the founding of the Massachusetts colony. The names of Shapley and Gibbons were Boston names. This alleged voyage of De Fonte in 1640 was so well accredited, thatDobbs made it the basis of an argument in 1744 tothe British governmentfor the certainty of apassage west through Hudson's bay : Ellis sustained it in 1748, ' This voyage from Boston is not the only one spoken of from indejK'ndent authority ; for at about the same period, (Ellis p. 71) Jercmio speaks of an- other ship's crew from Boston liaviu); bcscn met witli, whom some inferred might have been tliose sixjken of Ijy De Fonte. California and the North-u 3st Coast. 11 and it waa extensively believed in England up to 1776. Delisle's maps of 1750-55 were constructed on the theory of the voyage having been a reality. Lacroix in 1773 de- fends the truth of the account. As late as 1792, the Spaniards sent a ship to discover the Rio del Reys, the only authority for which was De Fonte's voyage. While the credit which was given to this voyage of De Fonte by leading French and English geographers may astonish us, we must remember the intensity of interest by which it was stimulated, the desire to find a rapid pas- sage to India by a northern route. On further investi- gations, pursued by a rival French geographer, Robert De Vaugondy and others,' it was pretty clearly estuolished that although there were De Fontes or De Fuentes in Chili and Peru, yet there never was a Spanish or Portu- guese admiral of the name of De Fonte, and that the re- cords of Mexico and Spain contained no account of a similar voyage having ever been performed at any period. It was further established that there was no Spanish original manu- script, and that the account of the voyage in the English magazine of 1708 was a jeu d'esprit of the editor, Mr. Pe- tiver, who was disposed to write a moon story on the most interesting theme of the day, i. e the remaining undis- covered limits of the New World. And perhaps he hoped by showing from pretended Spanish sources almost the cer- tainty of water communication from Hudson's bay to the Pacific, notwithstanding the Spaniards affirmed that there was no passage, to induce farther voyages to Hudson's bay for exploration. The fourth of the geographical legends sustained by De- lisle and Buache in their maps was the traditional straits 'Observations critiques sur les nouvclles decouvertes de I'Admiral Do La Fin .. :. Par M. Robert de Vaugondy, fils., Geog. ordinaire duRoi. Paris, 17.%. \2\ 12 California and the Aorth-west Coast. of Anian. It was a strait believed to be a passage by the north from east to west, commencing in from fifty-five to sixty degrees of latitude. Cortereal had named it in the year 1500 : Ladriliero in 1504, M. Chack in 1579, and Maldonado in 1598, all pretended to have entered those straits. Maldonado says that he sailed through it and back again. De Fuca thought his straits were those of Anian. Viscayno had been sent in 1602 to discover them. Drake said that he had discovered them. Maldonado's account which was the most detailed turned out to be sheer invention. Even after Behring's straits had been disco- vered, (Alaska being supposed to be an island and our continent narrow on the north), the straits of Anian were still searched lor : and it was inferred that Bernardo's orDe Fonte's straits must be those of Anian. The discoveries of the Russians were supposed to confirm the statements of De Fonte. And even after the discoveries of Capt. Cook, and as late as 1791, the straits of Anian were sought tor by the Spaniards under Malaspina. Torquemada in his Monarquia Indiana (liv. v, cap. 45), says that Philip II of Spain had determined to discover the coasts of California, because certain foreigr^srs had reported that they had passed by the north-west passage to the South sea by the straits of Anian, where they had seen a great town, and therefore Viscayno was sent on the enterprise. The final conclusion must be, that although we have in Behring's straits, that which responds to the idea of a water communication to the Arctic ocean, yet that all the pre- tended straits of Anian, were delusions of navigators or inventions of others. Ten years after Delisle, in 1765,only one hundred and five years since, Engel, the Swiss geographer, published a vol ume containing his studies on Western geography, accompanied California, and the North-west Coast. 13 with maps, upon which were delineated his ideas of the mountains and rivers of the interior and of the coast.* He rejected the notion of the truth of De Fonte's voyage, of the sea of the west, and of De Fuca's strait, and preferred generally the data given in the Spanish maps of the earliest period. These, the Dutch and English geographers had, with good reason, little hy little disregarded in their maps, or had given undue preference to the account of some one of the navigators. In accordance with his theory, Engel between 35 and 40° of latitude stretches our west- ern coast through 25° of longitude to the west, instead of less than five, as is the real fact ; and draws five rivers running due west to the Pacific from the interior, between 36 and 48° north latitude, one of them flowing over 50 degrees of longitude. The results of Engel's studies, when compared with our present knowledge, show that as little value was to be attached to the Spanish maps as to his own speculations. They were all alike constructed from unreliable data as regards the north-west coast in almost every particular. Maps published in London as late as 1775, (Sayer & Bennett's), adopt Engel's views in part, and a river is re- presented as flowing into the Pacific in latitude 45° due west, out of Lake Winnipeg. These maps trace some- times an imaginary north-west coast, but only refer to De Fonte, De Fuca, Chinese or Japanese maps for their au- thority. Some maps of this date treat the coast as unknown north of 43°, and leave an absolute blank from that point. We have thus followed the discoveries of the North West coast up to one hundred years since. And one hun- dred years since commenced the re-discovery by the Span- iards of Upper California. An ecclesiastico-military expe- 'MiMnoires et Observations goograpliiques et critiques sur la sitnatioa do8 pays soptontrionaux dol'Asio et de rAinerique. Lausanne, 1765. 4to. 14 California and the North-ioest Coast. \ dition came by land from Lower California, and established itself at San Diego on the first day of July, 1769, making the first historic day for California. Montferey was re-dis- covered May 31, 1770, not having been seen since 1603 by Viscayno. San Francisco was re-discovered by land, in 177<,, made a mission in 1775, and a presidio in 1776. The harbor was entered by water for the first time in 1775 (Randolph, p. 22, 33). These proceedings caused great rejoicings and ringing of bells in the city of Mexico, and at Madrid. The final general outline of our North-West coast was not made till ninety years since, in Capt. Cook's great but fatal third voyage. From Drake's time to Cook, no English flag had gone north of 43°. Simultaneously with our revolutionary war, under instructions from the Admiralty to survey that coast for the purpose of finding a northern passage to the east, and to discover the limits of the con- tinent. Cook left Plymouth in July, 1776, and reached lat. 44° 33' in March, 1778. It is not impossible that the ideas prevalent during the twenty-five preceding years, both of the narrowness of the continent and of numerous channels and rivers from the west, led the British govern- ment to surmise that their rebellious colonists might with advantage be attacked from the rear as well as the front, or at least might be prevented from settling remote from her vengeance. After Cook reached New Albion, the outline of the coast, as high as latitude 70°, was for the first time seen by a European, and surveytJ with an accuracy that with the instruments of former navigators would not have been possible. " He eficcted more in a single season than the Spaniards had accomplished in two centuries, though he passed De Fuca's straits without seeing them." D'UrvilJe, the French navigator, declares that he was the founder of California and the North-west Coast. 16 the true geography of the Pacific ocean : and to him wo are indebted for the destruction of the geographical fi^ctions 80 readily embraced by many preceding geographcrH. While Cook was preparing for his voyage, the viceroy of New Spain sent out un expedition for the same purpose uuderBruno Heceta, Juan de Ayala and luan de la Bodega y Quadra, in 1775. The account of this expedition was written by Maurelle the pilot of one of the vessels. Mau- relle went as far north as 57°, and he obtained a tolerable outline of the coast to that point, and sent home a note of alarm regarding the progress of Russian settlement. Maurelle had no better charts than the conjectural ones of the French, such as Bellin's of 1766, and he was on the look out fur DeFonte's pretended straits, which were in full faith still retained upon those charts. In 1779, another Spanish expedition, accompanied also by Maurelle, and Be la Bodega y Quadra, was sent over the same track, apparently unconscious that Cook had preceded them during 1778. This voyage went no farther north than 59°. In 1774 and 1755, Perez and Martinez, under the Span- ish flag, anchored at Nootka sound and sailed as far as 58°. The discoveries of Capt. Cook were not published until 1784. They produced a great excitement in favor of free trade in furs, hitherto a monopoly of fur companies; and the rivalry for this trade led to numerous voyages of ships of all nations. The most prominent of these were those of Portlock and Dixon in 1786 and 1787, chiefly for the purpose of trading in furs : when a detour for discovery was made, it was for the sake of finding new regions to buy furs of the natives. Dixon chronicles our still exist- ing ignorance of the continent by the observation, that " so imperfectly do we know the coast that it is in some mea- sure to be doubted whether we have yet seen the main land ; whether any land we have been near is really the 'a^vLmiSPn 16 California and the North-west Coast. continent, remains to be determined by future navigators." But he adds " the fur trade is inexhaustible." Meares, a mercantile voyager, in 1786, was the first European who had wintered on the coast north of San Francisco, making it an event of historic im{»ortance. He was a believer in De Fonte's and De Fuca's voyages as authentic. The next discoverer was, as was proper, an At < ,'iean, sailing under ship's papers given by the old Confederation in 1787. Capt. Gray, of Boston, on his second voyage, discovered the Columbia river, in 1792, and by right of discovery, then the law of nations, secured that outlet on the coast to the United States. He discovered Bulfinch's harbor, the only one for seven hundred miles, discovered Queen Charlotte's to be an island, and revealed De Fuca's straits to Vancouver, and for the first time carried the United States flag around the world. La Perouse had discovered the archipelago of Queen Charlotte's in 1786. Notwithstanding the discoveries of Capts. Cook and Gray, the results of the fabulous voyages of De Fonte, De Fuca and others were retained on maps till within eighty years, and they were not overthrown, and the veritable continent defined in its western limits until the memorable voyage of Vancouver was completed in 1794. Vancouver met with Capt. Gray on the coast to the great surprise of the former, and profited by the commu- nications made to him. He surveyed and defined Van- couver's island and its archipelago, and visited in all nine thousand miles of coast. , It was only after the results of his discoveries were published that it could be said that we had a tolera- bly correct map of the north-west coast. And yet absurd as it may seem, as late as 1794, Vancouver was in the hope, according to his instructions, of finding a river by ti:i, California and the North-west Coast, 17 which he could reach the Lake of the Woods, which is iu latitude 49° and longitude 95°, and writes of it as an im- portant fact he had substantiated that there was no navi- able passage to the east from latitude 30° to 50°. Capt. Houdt'ick, an American, in 1789 went around Vancouver's island. While it is within eighty years since we have learned what is the coast outline of our continent, it is not till within a period less than half of that, that we have become acquainted with the outlines of its interior geography. The continent a hundred years since had never been tra- versed by a European, north of Mexico; nor in Mexico, north of the gulf of California. Delisle's map of 1785 has in an imniense blank space the record: "the whole inte- rior is unknown," The plan of Jonathan Carver of Connecticut for cross- ing from ocean to ocean in 1772 had failed. His scheme was to have a military post established at the straits of Anian near Oregon. His map of 1778 contains a deline- ation of the sea of the west, the straits of Anian and of De Fuca, now fables of the past. John Ledyard, also of Connecticut, in 1786, persevered in a scheme, in which he was aided by Jefferson, to tra- verse the American continent by entering it from Russia; but was hindered from accomplishing it, owing to his im- prisonment by the Russians. Samuel Hearne of London, in 1772, by his journey of thirteen hundred miles from Fort Prince of Wales in lati- tude 60° to the Coppermine river, established the fact that the continent did not extend to the North pole. Alexander McKenzie in his first journey westward in 1789, reached only the Arctic ocean, but farther west than Hearne, to the river still called after his name as dis- coverer. In his second journey in 1793, he was the first . 18 California and the North-west Coast. Enropcnn to cross the continent on the north, and in its broiidest part, latitude 52° 20'. Ho had started also from the same fort on Hudson's bay, from which Hearne had proceeded. The British had no trading or military posts M'est of the Rocky mountains previous to the year 1806. A map of Mexico of Humboldt's, bearing date of the year 1811, designates the whole of the western territory of the ', United States as " unknown." \ In concluding this representation of our ignorance of California and the north-west coast until a comparatively very recent period, I will simply enumerate very briefly the prominent American exploring tours of the present century, by means of which this ignorance has been re- moved, and the country opened for settlement. It was not until 1804, the continuous chain of the Rocky mountains being as yet untraversed, and it still being possible that an iidand sea existed larger than Lake Supe- rior, that the continent was traversed by explorers through the territory of the United States. The expedition of our government, for which so much credit is due to Jefferson, was commanded by Lewis and Clark, and went down the Columbia river to its mouth. Their full narrative was not published till 1814, and down to 1844 was the principal source of information regarding the interior. Major Zebulon Pike's expedition in 1805 to 1807, was to find the sources of the Mississippi, and of the Arkansas, Kansas and Platte rivers. Hunt's expedition of 1811 was to found the settlement of AstDria at the mouth of the Columbia river. This settle- ment was shortly after abandoned by the American interest, owing to the war with Great Britain. Major S. H. Long's expedition in 1819 and 1820, was up the Platte to the Rocky mountains, and back by way oi the Arkansas river. California and the North-west Coast, 19 Schoolcraft and Cass's expeditions in 1820 and 1832, were for the discovery of the sources of the Mississippi, and to visit the copper deposits of Lake Superior. Fremont's expedition to Oregon and California, in 1843 and 1844, made a virtual discovery of Great Salt lake, of the basin of California, and established that there was no principal river flowing into the Pacific besides the Co- lumbia. The magnificent series of explorations of the United States government for a Pacific rail road route across the continent, on eight parallels of latitude, were as late as 1853 and 1854. 'No permanent settlements were made by us west of the Rocky mountains previous to 1834, being those which were commenced in Oregon. It was in 1827, that the first American entered Cali- fornia across the continent. lie was an agent of the American Fur Company by the name of Jedidiah S. '^naith. Finding himself in want, he resorted to misrepresentation, 80 as to secure protection and food from the jealous Span- ish settlers. He and his party of forty men were already gold hunters rather than fur hunters.* The future of California, its wealth, population and prosperity, either under Spaniards or Americans, was as yet anticipated or prophesied by no one. Two years before the discovery of gold, a writer in the Southern Quarterly BevieWy' predicts for her a future of the greatest inferiority. "Whether California will everbecome of any great import- ance in the history of the world, or advance to any con- spicuous position, agriculturally, commercially, or po- litically, is susceptible of the greatest doubt. In itself, it * E. Randolph's Address, 1860, San Francisco. "Vol. VIII, 1845. 20 Calif ornia and the Nurth-widt Coast, has little proHjJoet beyoiul u iiorvelcHH imbecility." Such were the i>revairni<^ aiitiiipationH only twenty-five years gince, reyurdin^^ the dcHtiny ol' the countries on the shores of the Pacitie. It will always be a theme for wonder that by the pro- gress of the arts and sciences within this one hundred years, the shortest route from Europe to China and Japan, to Cathay and India, has been found not in a passage by sea to the north of the continent, but by means of steam- cars on an iron road, through the territory of a people, not then having an indopctulent existence, and now liaving more than five milli< is of inhabitants west of the Missis- sippi. t f