Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS Sailing from Natividad in Mexico, then already a substantial unit in the vast colonial empire which had been put under the proud flag of Spain, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo brought two little ships into San Diego harbor in September, 1542. And these two clumsy little boats, as far as the pages of history reveal, brought to the shores of California the first white men, the first Europeans, to set foot on the soil of what is now the Golden State of the Union. Columbus had made his discovery of America just 50 years before; the proud Balboa had waded into the waters of the Pacific and claimed the ocean for the king forty-two years before; Cortez had long before started his conquest of Mexico; more than a score of vears had elapsed since Magellan had pushed through the straits which bear his name; the Dominion of Spain had been extended over a vast expanse of a continent new to Europe; gold-seekers, soldiers of fortune, hardy mariners had pushed on for new conquests. As Cabrillo's little craft struggled against wind and sea on their way into the unchartered waters to the north, the tattered, hungry, discouraged survivors of the proud band that had set out with De Soto and had crossed to the Mississippi in search of a new El Dorado were fighting their way back to Mexico. Such were some of the settings of the period. Cabrillo, like Magellan, was a Portuguese, but in the service of Spain, whose rulers hired whom they best could to do the work of carrying on further the flag of that proud nation, then at about the zenith of its power. The little ships which he commanded were the San Salvador and the Victoria. It seems almost a miracle in these days that men could conquer the perils of the sea in such craft as...