he penetrated with much difficulty and hazard to the bot tom of the bay, where he found a mighty river, flowing with so furious a current that they could hardly sail against it.* This was evidently the noble river now known by the name of the Colorado, which has its rise in the great mountain-range near the sources of the Rio Bravo del Norte, and after a course of 900 miles falls into the head of the Gulf of California. Alarchon determined to explore it; and taking with him two boats, with twenty men and some small pieces of artillery, he ascended to an Indian village, the inhabitants of which, by violent and furious gestures, dissuaded the Spaniards from landing. The party of natives, at first small, soon increased to a body of 250, drawn up in warlike fashion, with bows and arrows, and displayed banners. The Spanish admiral appeased them by signs, throwing his sword and target into the bottom of the boat, and placing his feet upon them. "They began," says he, in his letter to the viceroy Mendoza, "to make a great murmuring among themselves, when suddenly one came out from among them with a staff, upon which he had fixed some small shells, and entered into the water to give them I took them, and made signs to him that he should approach. On his doing so, I embraced him, giving him in exchange some trinkets; and he returning to his fellows, they began to look upon them and to parley together; and within a while many of them cheerfully approached, to whom I made signs that they should lay down their banners and leave their weapons; which they did immediately." Alarchon gives a minute description of the dress, weapons, and appearance of these Indians. They were decked after sundry fashions; the faces of some were covered with tattooed marks, extending lengthwise from the forehead to the chin, others had only half the face thus ornamented; but all were besmeared with coal, and every one as it liked him best. Others carried vizards before them, which had the shape of faces.† They wore on their heads a piece of deer-skin two spans broad, like a helmet, ornamented by various sorts of feathers stuck upon small sticks. Their weapons were bows and arrows, and two or three kinds o to me. Ramusio, Viaggi, vol. iii. p. 363. ↑ Such is the translation of Hakluyt; but the passage in the original is obscure maces of wood hardened in the fire. Their features were handsome and regular, but disfigured by holes bored through the nostrils and in many parts of the ears, on which were hung pendants, shells, and bones. About their loins was a girdle of divers colours, with a large bunch of feathers in the middle, which hung down like a tail. They cut their hair short before, but allow it behind to grow down to their waist. Their bodies were tattooed with coals, and the women wore round their waist a great wreath of painted feathers, glued together, and hanging down both before and behind.* sun, Having procured by signs a pacific reception from this new people, Alarchon found to his mortification that they did not understand his interpreter; but, after a little intercourse, observing that they worshipped the he unscrupulously intimated to them by significant gestures that he came from that luminary; "upon which they marvelled," says he," and began to survey me from top to toe, and showed me more favour than they did before." Soon after this a man was found among them who could speak the language of the interpreter; and an intercourse of a very extraordinary nature took place, in which the honesty and simplicity of the Indians are strikingly contrasted with the false and unprincipled policy of the Spaniards. The passage is uncommonly graphic and interesting: "The Indian first desired to know what nation we were, and whence we came ? Whether we came out of the water, or inhabited the earth, or had fallen from the heaven?" To this the admiral replied, that they were Christians, and came from far to see them, being sent by the sun, to which he pointed. "After this introduction, the Indian," continues Alarchon in his account of the voyage, "began again to ask me how the sun had sent me, seeing he went aloft in the sky and never stood still, and for these many years neither they nor their oldest men had ever seen such as we were, and the sun till that hour had never sent any other. I answered him, it was true the sun pursued his course aloft in the sky, and never stood still, but nevertheless they might perceive that at his setting and rising he came near the earth, where his dwelling was, and that they always saw him come out of one place • Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 364 and he had created me in that land whence he came, in the same way that he had made many others whom he sent into other parts; and now he had desired me to visit this same river, and the people who dwelt near it, that I might speak with them, and become their friend, and give them such things as they needed, and charge them not to make war against each other. On this he required me to tell them the cause why the sun had not sent me sooner to pacify the wars which had continued a long time among them, and wherein many had been slain. I told him the reason was that I was then but a child. He next inquired why we brought only one interpreter with us who comprehended our language, and wherefore we understood not all other men, seeing we were children of the sun? To which our interpreter answered, that the sun had also begotten him, and given him a language to understand him, his master the admiral, and others; the sun knew well that they dwelt there, but because that great light had many other businesses, and because his master was but young, he sent him no sooner. The Indian interpreter," continues Alarchon, "then turning to me, said suddenly, Comest thou, therefore, to be our lord, and that we should serve thee?' To which I answered, I came not to be their lord, but rather their brother, and to give them such things as I had. He then inquired whether I was the sun's kinsman, or his child? To which I replied I was his son, but those who were with me, though all born in one country, were not his children; upon which he raised his voice loudly and said, 'Seeing thou doest us so much good, and dost not wish us to make war, and art the child of the sun, we will all receive thee for our lord, and always serve thee; therefore we pray thee not to depart hence and leave us.' After which he suddenly turned to the people, and began to tell them that I was the child of the sun, and therefore they should all choose me for their lord."* The Indians appeared to be well pleased with this proposal, and assisted the Spaniards in their ascent of the river to the distance of eighty-five leagues; but finding it impossible to open a communication with the army under Coronado, Alarchon put about his ships, and returned to Mexico.t *Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 429. Ramusio, vol. iii. d. 356 After the expeditions of Coronado and Alarchon, in 1542, the spirit of enterprise among the Spaniards experienced some check, owing probably to the feeling of mortification and disappointment which accompanied the return of these officers. Yet Mendoza, unwilling wholly to renounce the high hopes he had entertained, despatched a small squadron under Rodriguez Cabrillo, which traced the yet undiscovered coast of North America some degrees beyond Cape Mendocino; and in 1596 and 1602, Sebastian Viscaino extended these discoveries along the coast of New-Albion to a river which appears to have been the present Columbia. It has even been asserted by some authors, that, four years prior to the voyage of Viscaino, Juan de Fuça, a veteran Spanish pilot, conducted a ship beyond the mouth of the Columbia, and doubling Cape Flattery, entered the Straits of Georgia, through which he passed till he came to Queen Charlotte's Sound. De Fuça imagined, not unnaturally, considering the imperfect and limited state of geographical knowledge, that he had now sailed through the famous and fabulous Strait of Anian: and that, instead of being in the Pacific as he then actually was, he bad conducted his vessel into the spacious expanse of the Atlantic. With this information he returned to Acapulco; but the Spanish viceroy received him coldly, and withheld all encouragement or reward,―a circumstance to which we may perhaps ascribe the cessation from this period of all further attempts at discovery by this nation upon the north-west coast of America. The whole voyage of De Fuça, however, rests on apocryphal authority. CHAPTER II. Russian and English Voyages. Behring-Tchirikow-Cook and Clerke-Meares-Vancouver- As the zeal of the Spanish government in extending their discoveries upon the north-west coast of America abated, another great nation, hitherto scarcely known to Europe, undertook at a later period the task which they had aban doned. Russia, within little more than half a century, had grown up from a collection of savage, undisciplined, and unconnected tribes, into a mighty people. Her conquests had spread with amazing rapidity till they embraced the whole of the north of Asia, and under the energetic administration of Peter the Great this empire assumed at once that commanding influence in the scale of European nations which it has continued to preserve till the present times. Among the many great projects of this remarkable man, the solution of the question, whether Asia, on the north-east, was united with America, occupied a prominent place; and it appears that during his residence in Holland in 1717, he had been solicited by some of the most eminent patrons of discovery among the Dutch to institute an expedition to investigate the subject. The resolution he then formed to set this great point at rest by a voyage of discovery was never abandoned; but his occupation in war, and the multiplicity of those state-affairs which engrossed his attention, caused him to delay its execution from year to year, till he was seized with his last illness. Upon his death-bed he wrote, with his own hand, instructions to Admiral Apraxin, and an order to have them carried into immediate execution. They directed, first, that one or two boats with decks should be built at Kamtschatka, or at any other convenient place; secondly, that with these a survey should be made of the most northerly coast of his Asiatic empire, to determine whether they were or were not contiguous to America; and, thirdly, that the persons to whom the expedition was intrusted should endeavour to ascertain whether on these coasts there was any port belonging to Europeans, and keep a strict look-out for any European ship, taking care also to employ some skilful men in making inquiries regarding the name and situation of the coasts which they discovered,-of all which they were to keep an exact journal, and transmit it to St. Petersburg. Upon the death of Peter the Great, which happened shortly after these instructions were drawn up, the Empress Catherine entered fully into his views, and gave orders to fit out an expedition for their accomplishment. The command was intrusted to Captain Vitus Behring. Under his orders were two lieutenants, Martin Spangberg and Alexei Tchirikow; and, besides other subaltern officers, they en |