smaller than any coasting schooner of today, badly built and scantily outfitted a crew chiefly composed of conscripts and natives, and the sturdy Levantine pilot, Bartolomé Ferrelo, or Ferrer, Cabrillo departed on the trail of adventure. Owing to calms and contrary winds and the frequent necessity to heave to and send ashore for fresh water, his progress was slow. By the 10th of August he had passed the most northerly point reached by Ulloa. Eleven days later he landed at the bay of San Quentín and took possession in the name of the King. Here a week was spent in taking in water and repairing sails and in receiving friendly visits from Indians who said that they had seen other Spaniards in the interior - probably some of Alarcón's or Coronado's band. The diarist of the expedition says that these Indians were smeared with a "white paste" in such a fashion that "they appeared like men in hose and slashed doublets." On the 28th of September, Cabrillo discovered "a port closed and very good, which they named San Miguel." This was the beautiful Bay of San Diego. On the purpled blue waters of this bay, safely sheltered by the long high stretch of Point Loma, their ships rode at anchor while a terrific storm raged without for three days.

When the gale had subsided Cabrillo continued northward. He discovered the islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente, and the pleasant Bay of Santa Monica, which he called the Bay of the Smokes, or Bay of the Fires, because of the low curling clouds of blue smoke rising from the Indian villages along its shores. On the 10th of October he went ashore at San Buenaventura, where he visited an Indian settlement which he called the Town of Canoes, in allusion to the excellent craft which the natives possessed. Then, sailing west, he passed through the Santa Bárbara Channel and on the eighteenth reached Point Conception, which he named Cabo de Galera because it was shaped like a galley. Here northwest winds drove him into Cuyler's harbor on San Miguel Island.

Two weeks later a southwester filled Cabrillo's sails and carried his vessels round the cape and along the high rocky coast, where the Santa Lucía Mountain comes down to the sea. Below Point Pinos the vessels were driven northward by a storm and became separated. Having missed the Bay of Monterey, Half Moon Bay, and the Golden Gate, Cabrillo turned back and discovered the harbor where Drake cast anchor twenty-five years later,

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and which is still known as Drake's Bay. Apparently Cabrillo now stood well out to sea, for again he missed the Golden Gate and Monterey Bay.

He put into San Miguel Island for winter; and there "on the 3d of the month of January, 1543, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, captain of the said ships, departed from this life, as the result of a fall which he suffered on said island when they were there before, from which he broke an arm near the shoulder . . . at the time of his death he emphatically charged them not to leave off exploring as much as possible all that coast." So, in a few words, we are told all we know of the character of Cabrillo, who had battered his way up the California coast in the pain of an injury sufficient to bring him to death, and whose last words to his men were to press on. His bones lie under the white sands of San Miguel Island, undiscovered yet save perhaps by some Portuguese or Levantine fisherman of a later time, driving the supports of his driftwood shack deep down through the shifting sand.

The command now devolved upon the pilot Ferrelo. Though frequently halted and swept about by heavy storms and suffering from diminished supplies, this fearless mariner, obeying his

master's behest, held on northward. He sailed to a point near the mouth of Rogue River, Oregon, when he turned back, through "travail" worse than any Cabrillo had experienced. On April 14, 1543, he reached the home port of Navidad.

Interest in California was revived by developments in the Far East. Though Villalobos had taken possession of the Philippines in the year of Ferrelo's voyage, the Spaniards had not occupied the islands. But in 1559 Philip II, tempted by the profits accruing to the Portuguese from their spice trade, ordered Velasco, the Mexican Viceroy, to equip an expedition for discovery among those islands and to search out a route for return voyages to Mexico for the problem of the return voyage had hitherto baffled mariners. In 1564, after many delays, Miguel López de Legazpi set sail from Navidad and, in the following year, took possession of the Philippines. Legazpi sent one of his vessels, with his chief navigator, Fray Andrés de Urdaneta, to discover the return route to New Spain. Urdaneta, turning northward, entered the Japan current, which carried him to the coast of northern California whence he descended to Mexico. By a happy combination of chance and

science he had solved the problem of the return route. Thus a regular trade route was established from Manila to Mexico and thence to Spain. The Manila galleons sailed the course marked `out by Urdaneta, across the Pacific to a point off Cape Mendocino and down the coast to Acapulco. It was a hard voyage and frequently the vessels reached the American coast much in need of repairs and with a loss of half the crew from scurvy. There was therefore need of a port on the northern coast. Also, Spanish interests in the Pacific were threatened by the possibility that English, French, or Dutch freebooters in the Atlantic might discover the Strait of Anian and take control of the direct route to the Spice Islands even as Portugal had formerly monopolized the African route. In fact, Drake, who appeared on the California coast in 1579, having plundered Spanish harbors and a Manila galleon on his northward trip, was believed to have discovered the Strait and to have sailed homeward through it. Six years later, Cavendish looted and burned the Santa Ana, a Manila galleon, off California. Dutch mariners rounded Cape Horn, whose name commemorates one of them, and pushed their operations into the western seas. And Spain's Armada had been destroyed by Drake, the