STATISTICAL }XIV. Province of Old California. Chiametlan (Chametla). He coasted both sides of the gulf, then known by the name of the Sea of Cortez, and which the historian Gomara compared very judiciously in 1557 to the Adriatic Sea. It was during his stay at the bay of Santa Cruz that the afflicting news reached Cortez of the arrival of the first viceroy at New Spain. This great conqueror was pursuing with unabated ardour his discoveries in California, when the report of his death was spread at Mexico. Juana de Zuñiga, his spouse, fitted out two vessels and a caravele to learn the truth of this alarming information. However, Cortez, after running a thousand dangers, anchored safely at the port of Acapulco. He continued to pursue, at his own expense, through Francisco de Ulloa, the career which he had so gloriously begun; and Ulloa, in the course of two years, ascertained the coast of the gulf of California, to near the mouth of the Rio Colorado. The map drawn up by the pilot Castillo at Mexico in 1541, which we have already several times cited, represents the direction of the coasts of the peninsula of California nearly as we know them at present. Notwithstanding this progress of geography under the activity of Cortez, several writers under the weak reign of Charles the Second began to consider California as an archi STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. XIV. Province of Old California. }XIV. pelago of great islands called Islas Carolinas. The pearl fishery only drew from time to time a few vessels from the ports of Xalisco, Acapulco, or Chacala; and when three jesuits, Fathers Kühn, Salvatierra, and Uguarte, visited most minutely between 1701 and 1721 the coast which surrounded the sea of Cortez (mar roxo ò vermejo), it was believed in Europe to have been discovered for the first time that California was a peninsula. The more imperfectly any country is known, and the farther it is removed from the best peopled European colonies, it more easily acquires a reputation for great metallic wealth. The imaginations of men are delighted with the recitals of wonders which the credulity or the cunning of the first travellers delivers in a mysterious and ambiguous tone. On the Caraccas coast the wealth of the countries situated between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro are highly extolled; at Santa Fe we hear the missions of the Andaquies incessantly vaunted; and at Quito the provinces of Macas and Maynos. The peninsula of California was for a long time the Dorado of New Spain. A country abounding in pearls ought, according to the vulgar logic, also to produce gold, diamonds, and other precious stones, in abundance. A monkish traveller, Fray Marcos de STATISTICAL XIV. Province of Old California. ANALYSIS. Nizza, turned the heads of the Mexicans by the fabulous accounts which he gave of the beauty of the country situated to the north of the gulf of California, of the magnificence of the town of Cibola*, of its immense population, and of its police and the civilization of its inhabitants. Cortez and the viceroy Mendoza disputed beforehand the conquest of this Mexican Tombouctou. The establishments made by the jesuits in California since 1683 made known the great aridity of the country, and the great difficulty of bring * The old manuscript map of Castillo places the fabulous town of Cibola, or Cibora, under the 37° of latitude. But on reducing its position to that of the mouth of the Rio Colorado, we are tempted to believe that the ruins of the Casas grandes of the Gila, mentioned in the description of the intendancy of Sonora, may have given occasion to the stories told by good Father Marcos de Nizza. However, the great civilization which this monk affirms to have found among the inhabitants of these northern countries appears to me a fact of considerable importance, which is connected with what we have already related of the Indians of the Rio Gila and the Moqui. The authors of the 16th century placed a second Dorado to the north of Cibora under the 41° of latitude. According to them, the kingdom of Tatarrax, and an immense town called Quivira, were to be found there on the banks of the lake of Teguayo, near the Rio del Aguilar. This tradition, if it is founded on the assertion of the Indians of Anahuac, is remarkable enough; for the banks of the lake of Teguayo, which is, perhaps, identical with the lake of Timpanogos, are indicated by the Aztec historians as the country of the Mexicans. STATISTICAL XIV. Province of Old California. ing it under cultivation; and the bad success which attended the mining operations at Santa Ana, to the north of Cape Pulmo, diminished the enthusiasm excited by the marvellous accounts of the metallic wealth of the peninsula. But the grudge and the hatred entertained against the jesuits gave rise to the suspicion that this order concealed from the government the treasures of a country so long extolled. These considerations determined the visitador Don Jose de Galvez, whom a chivalrous disposition had engaged in an expedition against the Indians of Sonora, to pass over into California. He found there naked mountains without soil and without water; and a few Indian fig-trees and stunted shrubs in the crevices of the rocks. There was no indication. of the gold and silver which the jesuits were accused of extracting from the bowels of the earth; but every where they perceived traces of their industry and the praise-worthy zeal with which they applied to cultivate a desert and arid country. In the course of this Californian expedition, the visitador Galvez was accompanied by the Chevalier d'Asanza, a man as remarkable for his talents as for the great vicissitudes of fortune which he has experienced, who acted as secretary under M. Galvez. He declared frankly what was soon much better proved by the operations of the small army than by the physicians of Pitic, ANALYSIS. XIV. Province of Old California. that the visitador was deranged in mind. M. d'Asanza was apprehended and confined for five months in a prison in the village of Tepozotlan, where, thirty years afterwards, he made his solemn entry as viceroy of New Spain. The peninsula of California, which equals England in extent of territory, and does not contain the population of the small towns of Ipswich or Deptford, lies under the same parallel with Bengal and the Canary Islands. The sky is constantly serene and of a deep blue, and without a cloud; and should any clouds appear for a moment at the setting of the sun, they display the most beautiful shades of violet, purple, and green. All those who had ever been in California (and I have seen many in New Spain) preserved the recollection of the extraordinary beauty of this phenomenon, which depends on a particular state of the vesicular vapour, and the purity of the air in these climates. No where could an astronomer find a more delightful abode than at Cumana, Coro, the island of Marguerite, and the coast of California. But unfortunately in this peninsula the sky is more beautiful than the earth. The soil is sandy and arid, like the shores of Provence; vegetation is at a stand; and rain is very unfrequent. A chain of mountains runs through the centre of the peninsula, of which the most elevated, the |