The great Pacific coast, twelve thousand miles in the golden west, being an account of life and travel in the western states of North and South America, from California, British Columbia, and Alaska: to Mexico, Panama, Peru and Chile; and a study of their physical and political conditions

Front matter

Glass

Book

DlSTRlCT°fCOL\MiA]

Preface

The purpose of the present work is to treat of the vast region of the Pacific Coast of North and South America as a physical and political entity, seen from the point of view of the observant traveller from journeys extending over a number of years : a task never perhaps attempted before. The excellent reception accorded to my former travel books, dealing with some of the States of South and North America, is borne out by the pile of favourable reviews and of numerous letters from readers at home and abroad which I have; and the several editions which have been reached in a short space : and these seem to oflfer a measure of popularity for the present work. To those (few) reviewers who have objected to intimate descriptions I would reply that these books, having at base a geographical purpose, are written to interest the ordinary reader and student of travel-lore, rather than for the scientist.

The Author.

London^ October 1909.

Contents

PAGE

I. "to the uttermost parts of the sea" ... I

II. the history of the great coast . . . .21

II The History Of The Great Coast

When and where did European man first set eyes upon the Pacific Ocean, and tread the strand of its coast? It is the year 15 13, and a Spanish conquistador, surrounded by sixty of his followers upon one memorable day, is standing on the summit of a range of mountains which they have ascended from the east. The sun is setting, and as the leader tops the summit he gazes earnestly and long towards the west ; and with an exclamation which attracts his companions' attention, points forward with outstretched arm. What do they see? Something never seen before by the white man. They see a world of waters stretching away under the sunset : an unknown ocean. The Spaniard was Vasco Nuiiez de Balboa; the hill upon which he stood was a peak in the isthmus of Darien or Panama, and the waters stretching away on his horizon were that great sea afterwards called the Pacific Ocean. And on the fourth day following the Spaniards made their way over the wild intervening land and arrived upon that unknown shore; and rushing waist-deep into the surf Balboa drew his sword and waved it over the face of the waters, taking possession of the ocean and the land on either hand for the king of Spain.

It was an enormous claim to make. On the one hand — although, of course, Balboa knew it not — the land stretched to the north for eight thousand miles to where it touches the fringe of Asia; on the other it extended through the South Sea to that equally unknown Cape of Storms, the Horn, five thousand miles below. Truly it was a world-encircling littoral to which at that moment discovery gave the titledeeds to the genius of Spain !

Balboa had pierced the very heart and centre of the Great Pacific Coast; that slender topographical link of the isthmus of Panama which joins the great continents of North and South America. But it was not enough to see and touch the ocean; and Balboa with a train of Indians brought timbers from the Atlantic side and built and launched vessels, and coasting along those sunset shores gathered in gold and pearls. This was in 1517. His way across the isthmus was marked in blood — as the way of the Spanish conquistadores generally was — the blood of the poor Indians, for hundreds of these human beasts of burden died under their taskmasters' lash in their march with this shipbuilding material, across the rugged isthmus. Balboa, however, accomplished little beyond small coasting expeditions, although he and his followers gave the name of Peru to the southward-stretching land below Panama. Balboa, soon afterwards, was executed, as a result of the machination of jealous rivals, dying a violent death, like most of the conquistadores.

Ever since the time of Columbus, twenty years before these events, the Spaniards had been obsessed by the idea of and belief in the existence of a "strait," which should give access from the Atlantic Ocean to the West, and so to the Orient ; and their bold mariners had been diligently searching therefor; and now that it was seen that only a few miles of land separated the great oceans, as demonstrated by Balboa, the search which had slackened from the discouragement of continual non-success was greatly stimulated. Not only was this urgent and persistent belief in the existence of a strait indulged in by the Spanish, but the other maritime nations of Europe cherished it equally; and to the persistent exploration which obeyed it was due the rapid geographical knowledge which was gained of the Atlantic coast of North America. The great rivers of that continent were confidently expected to give access to the Pacific, but the mariner-explorers were repeatedly baffled. The Spaniards, it is more than probable, sought a strait more with the object of holding it against other nations, in order to render inviolate their undisputed ownership of the Great Pacific Coast at that period.

But following closely on the exploit of Balboa came another romantic and stormy chapter of discovery — the conquest of Mexico. On a memorable day — it was Good Friday, the 21st of April, in the year 15 19 — Hernando

Cortes and his followers landed on the shores which they named Vera Cruz, washed by the Gulf of Mexico. How they won their way up the fastnesses of the Mexican Cordillera, beset betwixt allies and savage foes, and how the lake-city of Mexico fell at length before them forms, perhaps, the most thrilling chapter of that age. It would be beyond the province of this work to enter into much detail upon the conquest of Mexico ; and I have given it in another work, to which I may beg to direct the reader's attention. Moreover, that remarkable conquest belongs more to the Atlantic than to the Pacific sphere.

The next incident in the story of the Great Pacific Coast is in 1 52 1, when the Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magallanes with his pilot Sebastian del Cano, a Spaniard, discovered and traversed the straits which bear his name, at the southern extremity of South America ; and sailed thence to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan it was who gave the great ocean its name — the Pacific.

Mexico and the Aztec Empire and Panama being in the power and occupation of Spain, the lands of central America soon fell before other of the conquistadores, who followed the exploits of Cortes and Balboa. In central America the ruthless gospel of the Spaniards, with blood, plunder and the Cross, resulted in the discovery of Lake Nicaragua and the Gulf of Fonseca, slightly to the north of Panama; and the river flowing from this lake to the Atlantic waters (the Caribbean Sea) gave birth to the idea — in 1523 — of a canal which, cutting through the level land to the west of the lake, might complete the longed-for interoceanic means of communication. In the history of this region the ruthless Pedrarias Davila has left the memory of his deeds, written, like others of the acts of the conquistadores, in the blood of the natives.

Following upon these traffics and discoveries came the beginnings of another conquest, as startling and romantic as that of Mexico — the conquest of Peru. Another adventurous Spanish navigator, Andagoya, had voyaged down the Pacific Coast southwardly from the New Settlement of Panama, in 1522, towards the region which Balboa had already called "Peru." Then uprose the famous Pizarro, and in company with a partner, Diego Almagro, both Spanish men who had sought fortune in this new world of Panama, and had settled on the isthmus, formed a company, and with the licence of the governor of Panama set sail on conquest bent, into the unknown world which stretched away towards the south. This was on November 14, 1524. The exploits of Pizarro are of the most famous in the history of the New World — his conquest of the Inca Empire and the capture of its emperor. But whilst no such perils of savage foes befell the expeditions of Pizarro such as compassed Cortes in Mexico, for the Incas were easily subjugated, other obstacles were encountered ; and it was not until November 1532 that the real conquest of Peru was consummated.

Returning now to Cortes, this intrepid conquistador had been appointed by Carlos V of Spain Governor and Captain- General of Mexico in 1522 and ever avid of adding fresh laurels to his name, and obsessed more than any one else by the hopes of the discovery of a "strait," which should give communication between the Atlantic and Pacific waters, sent an expedition to the west, beyond the plains and valley of Anahuac which formed the Aztec and Spanish centre. The wonderful news was brought back of a vast western sea, bounding the continent towards the setting sun. Rightly the conquistador judged this to be the same ocean of Balboa, and his imagination was instantly fired to explore it. On a previous expedition, during the siege of the Aztec city of Mexico in 15 19, Cortes had penetrated as far westward as Cuernavaca, near the great Balsas River, upon a punitive expedition ; but now he established a naval station on the coast, and sent vessels northward to explore the region above ; and in 1534 the southern extremity of the great peninsula now known as Baja or Lower California was discovered. The navigators imagined this peninsula to be an island, and an attempt was made to found a colony upon it, which failed, however. Most of these expeditions sent out by Cortes resulted in disappointment; but the strong impression made upon his imagination by the possibilities of the Great Pacific urged him to further effort and to greater expense — for conquest had brought him both authority and riches. He personally conducted an expedition to Honduras to further that of his emissary and co-conquistador, Cristobal de Olid, who had been one of his generals in the conquest of Mexico; and upon this expedition it was that the unfortunate Guatemoc, who had accompanied him, was ruthlessly executed. At that period also the conquest of Guatemala was made by Pedro de Alvarado, the rash and impetuous but brave conquistador who also had assisted so prominently in the subjugation of the warlike Aztec Empire.

Whilst these matters were pending the heroic Pizarro and his handful of Spanish adventurers were struggling along the appalling coast zone of Ecuador and Peru, starving often, defeated at times, abandoned by their comrades and suffering by reason of the perversity and opposition of the governor of Panama, who hindered the sending of reinforcements. How they crossed these burning deserts and ascended by the remarkable Inca roads up the mountain fastnesses of the Cordillera of the Andes in search of the Inca potentate — Atahualpa — who ruled those regions ; how their horses and guns astounded and overawed the Inca natives, as the horses and guns of Cortes had a short time before impressed the Aztec peoples of Mexico, and how they won great treasure and subdued an empire form the most unforgettable and romantic chapter in the whole history of the Great Pacific Coast. It has fallen to my lot to follow in the footsteps both of Cortes and of Pizarro, in Mexico and Peru, and thither we shall journey, kind reader.

In 1539, after spending large sums of money in sending out more or less fruitless expeditions, Cortes dispatched Don Francisco de Ulloa to explore the Mexican coast northward, with three small ships. One of these was lost; the others sailed up the Gulf of California and reached its head, the delta of the great Colorado River. Thence Ulloa turned southward again, followed the shore of the great peninsula of Baja California, rounded its dangerous headland of San Lucas, and took his way, after battling against adverse winds and currents, up the hitherto unknown waters of the Pacific Coast as far north as Cerros Island, in latitude 28° N. The ships were badly equipped and his crew scurvy-stricken, and Ulloa never returned from that voyage. The only survivors were those of the accompanying vessel, which reached Mexico again to render account to Cortes. At this time the star of the world-famous conquistador of Mexico was declining, and the first viceroy, Mendoza, appointed by Carlos V of Spain, came into strong rivalry with Cortes. Now it w-as that the land expedition of Coronado was sent forth in search of the mythical El Dorado of Cibola, of whose existence stories had come down from the north ; and jMendoza further dispatched a fleet under Alar(;on to the head of the Gulf of California to support it. Alar9on ascended the Colorado River in boats up to its confluence with the Gila, which enters from Arizona, and thus demonstrated that Lower California was a peninsula and not an island, as had been supposed. It was at this period that the fantastic name of "California" was given to the region. The origin of this appellation is now considered to have been derived from the name of a fabulous island depicted in a Spanish romance or novel of the period.

The governing of "New Spain," as Mexico had been oflicially termed, was carried on at first by an Audiencia, or species of administrative council nominated from Spain by royal decree, and the president of this body — Guzman — treated the natives with great abuse. In Michoacan, one of the Pacific states of Mexico, an unfortunate Indian chief was burned to death in 1527 because he W'Ould not give up his treasure, and so the oppression by Spaniards and colonists of the people began its reign, ameliorated in some cases by the acts of good viceroys, and Churchmen, who strove to carry out a juster Imperialism. In 1540 Cortes returned to Spain, practicallv ousted by the viceroy Mendoza, but the king scarcely listened to his grievances, and, hastened by indifference and ingratitude for his great services, he died in December 1547. Mendoza, the first viceroy, must be described as a good and capable ruler. Under him the first printing-press was established in the New World, and as to exploration he sent out Cabrillo, who penetrated still farther along the Pacific Coast to the north, letting go his anchor in a good harbour, which to-day is that of San Diego, the southernmost of California. As far as is known this was the first appearance of the white man on the shores of that part of the Great Pacific Coast which forms the United States and British Columbia. The ships of Cabrillo coasted northward vaHantly in spite of the terrible south-west gales which they encountered, reaching the Bay of Monterey; but little did they suspect the existence of the now famous Golden Gate — the entrance to San Francisco Bay, when, setting sail again towards the north, blown still by fierce storms, they passed, without seeing them, Point Pinos and Mount Tamalpais— sentinels watching near that famous entrance — passed them and reached latitude 42°. Borne back once more with the veering gale to the south-east — Cabrillo imploring the clemency of the Holy Virgin — they let go anchor at the Farallones and saw from afar the hills around the Golden Gate, and the pine-clad headland. But Nature still guarded her secret places, and the elusive cleft of the great harbourentrance was below their horizon, and they missed seeing it. Still, they were the first Europeans to see its surroundings. Cabrillo died upon this voyage, but his pilot, Ferelo, another typical man of the times, eager for fame for himself and added glory for Spain, again pressed northwards under an appalling gale and again returned, and still the secret of the Golden Gate remained unlearned.

However, at least the map of the Great Pacific Coast was unrolling, thanks to these gallant men of Spain. From near the present northern boundary of California, southwards through Mexico, Central America, and Panama, and down to Peru, and upwards from Cape Horn the course of this giant coast had now, in the middle of the sixteenth century, been given to the world.

Yet it should rather be said that this great geographical advance was given to Spain, for Spain, having discovered, dominated the Pacific Coast ; and the great ocean which washed it was to all intents and purposes a Spanish sea. There was no approach to it save by the appalling Straits of Magellan, and the viceroys, governors and priests who dwelt along that mighty littoral felt as secure there as in their own mother country. For Spain at this period was the mightiest nation in Europe. The sixteenth century belonged to her ; Carlos V was the greatest potentate of Christendom ; and for over a hundred degrees of latitude his sceptre ruled that far-off region of the Great Pacific Coast.

Viceroy followed viceroy in Mexico; in Peru and Chile much had taken place; the Inca Empire was a thing of the past; Almagro and Pizarro had both died violent deaths — the latter in June 1541, after a beneficial rule for the country he had dominated. But these were but internal incidents; and the power of Spain was unquestioned in the Pacific-American world.

But as they slumbered thus amid their peaceful bays and valleys and humble Indians, the Spaniards were suddenly aroused by a veritable bolt from the blue — Drake ! The great heart of Britain was awakening; the great buccaneers of Britain and Holland were to dispute the Spanish sway upon those peaceful shores. "What! " cried the viceroy of Lima, Don Francisco de Toledo, starting up in consternation when he heard of this, the first "heretic" keel which had ever cloven the waters of the great Pacific Coast, "it /cannot be possible. Is not this the sacred dominion of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain ! " Francis Drake, however, held Spanish viceroys as his especial enemies. He had entered the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan, having left Plymouth with Elizabethan permission on December i3> i577> with a squadron of five ships. Near the town of Valdivia in Chile he captured a treasure-ship, and then sailing northward to Peru fell like a hawk upon Callao ; bagged another plate-ship, and, cutting the cables of the other Spanish vessels in the harbour to prevent pursuit, set sail in his flag-ship, the Golden Hind, alone, for the squadron had been scattered by the storms of Magellan, to the northward still, hot in the wake of a great galleon full of gold and silver which had just left for Panama. Away they went up the great Pacific Coast, and when the wifid dropped they put the boats out and towed the ship for three days. The reward of this strenuous chase was the great plate-ship, which they bagged off Cape Francisco with — it is recorded — nearly a million pounds on board : gold and silver torn from the virgin rocks of the Andes by sacrifice of Indian lives ! The daring admiral then continued his northward voyage; as one of his objects was to discover the still hoped-for passage to the Atlantic. Moreover, he knew that Spanish war-vessels would be thoroughly guarding the Magellan homeward way, which, as a matter of fact, the outraged Lima viceroy, Toledo, was doing with eleven ships. Northward, then, his prow was turned still, until he re^iched the latitude of 42" N. — the same latitude which Cabrillo had earlier reached, encountering a cold climate. On June 17, 1579, he entered a good harbour in latitude 38" 30' (which is believed to be the bay called Drake's Bay on modern maps, a few miles to the north of the Golden Gate of San Francisco), and here the intrepid man of Devon and his sea-dogs took possession of the land for Queen Elizabeth under the name of "New Albion," referring both to their island home of Britain and to the white cliffs of this new land.

Upon the shore of this bay, just under the protecting hook of Point Reyes, Drake repaired the Golden Hind, building a wall of stone to protect his crew from the possible attacks of Indians. They landed, moreover, on the south-east Farallon — the rocky islets off the Golden Gate, and secured sea-wolves or seals, the same animals which the traveller of to-day hears barking on that coast. The meat was an acceptable food, the diary of the voyage states, and they laid in a store of it. It is maintained by some authorities that Drake, although he found the "good harbour" under the white cliffs, which he named "New Albion," did not see the entrance to the elusive Golden Gate, nor enter San Francisco Bay, as it was overlapped to his view by the peninsula, or w^as below his horizon. Probably, however, this must remain a point of geographical doubt, as other authorities hold that Drake discovered the Golden Gate.

Turning thence, Drake bid farewell for the time being to the Great Pacific Coast, which he had so ravished, and directing the prow of the famous Golden Hind towards the setting sun, he bore bravely out into the limitless waters of the Pacific Ocean to circumnavigate the world for home — the second who had performed that wondrous deed, leaving the Spanish warships to cruise uselessly about at the bottom of South America.

The close of the sixteenth century marked the beginning of the decline of Spain. In 1588 the Invincible Armada perished, and Spain's sea-power dwindled. Exploration of the northern region of the Great Pacific Coast fell off, and except for the voyages of the Spanish emissary Vizcaino, for the fortifying of San Diego and Monterey harbours against buccaneers from Europe, and the visits of the Manila ships trading to the Philippines, no vessels scoured those seas at all, and upper California was uncontrolled save by its own savage indigenes. The stream of filibusters, buccaneers, corsairs and explorers which harried and visited the Spanish-American coasts of Chile, Peru, Panama and Mexico, later, in the following century, of British, Dutch, French and other nationalities, whether intent upon taking toll of defenceless coast towns and their treasuries, whether upon more peaceful errands, did not go much to the northwards of Mexico. Spain and the Great Pacific Coast which she ruled slept for more than a century and a half, and England, France and Holland undertook the colonizing of the New World of North America, on the Atlantic. The Pilgrim Fathers sailed. New England was established; Quebec was peopled; the AUeghanies, the Mississippi and other great natural features were found and crossed; British navigators eagerly sought the north-west passage from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, and Spain held Florida. But above all was the rise of Britain; her sea-power dominated everywhere, and she gained possession of the entire half of the North American continent upon the Atlantic.

But in the meantime an important event had occurred on the great Pacific Coast. In 1740 the Russian navigator Behring sighted the coasts of Alaska, the northernmost part of the continent, in the icy Arctic regions; and his name remains to-day in Behring Straits. This remarkable channel is only thirty-five miles in width, separating Asia from America in the Pacific, and connected by the continental shelf. Indeed, it might have been supposed that America would have been discovered and peopled first from that side, where land, islands and ice are almost continuous, instead of by Europeans, who first must cross the Atlantic. Probably it was so discovered and peopled by the peoples who, emigrating from Asia, formed the ancestors of the Aztecs, Toltecs and Incas of Mexico and Peru in pre-Hispanic days. Vitus Behring had doubled the farthest eastern point of Asia in the service of the Russian Government in 1728; and then it was that he crossed to the frigid coasts of Alaska, in 1740.

Up to this period nothing had been known of the inland sea of San Francisco and its singular entrance; that cleft in the coast range now termed the Golden Gate — always supposing that Drake had not entered it. But in 1772 an expedition set out from Monterey with a comandante and a -padre, journeyed along the Californian foothills and skirted the shore of the bay where the city of Oakland now stands, and saw the estuary of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, and beheld the snowy range, which they named the Sierra Nevada. A few days after this they perceived the opening of the Golden Gate and its sea-horizon beyond, backed by the Farallones — thus first discovering and recording it. Two years later another expedition, also with a comandante and a priest, ascended the rocky headlands which overhang the gate and planted a cross upon their virgin crags, blessed the place, and had view of the pinnacled islets of the Farallons, which, far to seaward, the traveller of to-day may behold from San Francisco's environs.

But the real conquest of the Golden Gate was yet to come : the passage of its virgin waters by a European prow. A little later sea-expeditions were dispatched by the indefatigable viceroys of New Spain to found missions and Presidios upon that rocky coast and inland bays ; especially the energetic Bucareli of Viceregal Mexico, seconded by the willing efforts of the comandantes and the priests. The splendid pinecovered headland — Point Pinos — and the pinnacled Farallones were the landmarks to the elusive and mysterious fog-bound Gate of California, which only the rays of the setting sun and the navigating sea-lions had penetrated yet : the gate which was to be the outlet to an empire, to which all the wealth of California should gravitate by natural laws. But now the hour and the vessel had arrived to penetrate this unravished entrance, which nature had so jealously guarded from Drake, "the master-thief of the unknown world," to yield herself up to the insinuations of the (doubtless !) austere and ascetic padres of the Church. The day was the 27th of July, 1775, when the San Carlos sailed from Monterey; and at the termination of the Novena, the ninedays' oration celebrated by the officiating padre, the port was sighted. The vessel's launch, which had been fashioned by the carpenters earlier from a single redwood log, was dispatched to reconnoitre the cliff-bound channel of the Golden Gate. As it did not return, the vessel herself, deeming it prudent and aided by the strong flood current setting inwards at the time, and lighted by the last rays of the setting sun, which were borne over the great Pacific bosom, and the silver gleam of the rising moon, the San Carlos herself passed through the Golden Gate and dropped anchor in the bay.^ Thus this great and famous harbour of the North Pacific Ocean was first given to the knowledge and use of man.

And now Great Britain enters on the scene once more upon this mighty littoral. Henry Hudson had perished in the great northern inland sea which perpetuates his name, a century before, and other brave lives had gone in the search for the hoped-for North-west Passage. Yet it was known that a great open sea existed far to the north-west of Hudson's Bay, approachable via Behring Strait; for Samuel Hearn, an emissary of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, had explored the northern wilderness for a thousand miles to where the Coppermine River debouched into some sea of the north. The work of the great Drake was to be continued, and the famous Captain Cook sails in upon the scene —Cook, the discoverer of New Zealand, the explorer of the Australian shore. "Explore the coast and waters of New Albion," were the instructions issued to Captain Cook by the British Admiralty, "northwards to 65°, and seek to find a passage from Behring's Strait into the Atlantic." Cook sailed in July 1776; spent a year and a half in the South Pacific, sailed north and west, and discovered the Sandwich Islands, January 1778, and two months later reached the American coast upon the 44th parallel. Going still northward he looked for the supposed inlet-passage by which it had been said an Italian navigator, Juan de Fuca, had reached the Atlantic, found it not, but in latitude 49° entered a harbour now called Nootka Sound, on the coast of

1 For details of these matters, see T/ie Discovery of San Fmndsco Bay, Professor Davidson : San Francisco, California.

Indians of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, at the present time.

Vancouver Island. To Mount Edgecumbe and Mount Saint Elias he applied those respective names — the latter the great snowy peak more than eighteen thousand feet altitude upon the borders of the i\Iaska and Yukon of to-day, whose gleaming crest forms so notable a landmark from the sea. Onwards still went Cook, towards the frozen north, searching ever for a passage; and at last, sailing through Behring Strait, he reached "the north-westernmost extremity of all America" and named it "Cape Prince of Wales," — August 9, 1778. Immediately opposite this headland he found another cape. It was the north-easternmost point of Asia; that striking and interesting geographical condition in which the ancient continent — cradle of the human race — approaches the shores of the New World : latitude 66° N.

So the genius of Britain completed what the genius of Spain had begun, for the work of Cook was corollary, 265 years afterwards, to the work of Magellan and Balboa.

Nevertheless, Spain claimed the whole of this vast coast, by right of Balboa's first entrance and the subsequent Papal "authority." But the sojourn of Cook at Nootka had given rise to an unexpected development — a development brought about to some extent, moreover, by an insignificant animal : the sea-otter. Canoe-loads of Indians had crowded about Cook's ships with the sea-otters' skins for barter; and when the expedition on its homeward voyage reached Canton in China, these skins were found to be of great value — a skin which had cost sixpence, perhaps, selling for a hundred dollars. The possibility of fur-trading following upon this created great interest in England and elsewhere, and ships and traders of all the maritime peoples of Europe and of the United States began to frequent the north-west coast. Spain viewed these proceedings with alarm. Were not these still her own sacred waters ? Action was necessary : an expedition to Nootka followed, difficulties and preparations for war between Britain and Spain ensued; but by the Nootka Convention of November 1790 British rights were admitted, and Spain lost the sovereignty of the region.