“Juan,” he said, to his young attendant, on Christmas Eve, “how gladly
the bells will be ringing in Lisbon to-night. I seem to hear them now.
They drive out all other sounds. Call Ferrelo and let no one else come
but the padre.” Very soon Juan returned with Cabrillo’s first assistant,
the pilot, Ferrelo, a brave navigator and a just man.
“Ferrelo,” said Cabrillo, faintly, “Death calls me, and the duty I lay
down you must take up. I command you to push the expedition northward
at all hazards, and to keep such records as are necessary in order that
fitting account of our voyage shall be given to the world. Will you
promise me to do this?”
“I will, my master,” said Ferrelo, simply. “To the best of my ability
will I take up your work.”
“Always looking for the strait, Ferrelo?”
“Always, senor.”
On the 3d of January, 1543, the brave man died and was buried in the
sands of Cuyler Harbor on San Miguel Island. His men called the island
Juan Rodriguez. This name was afterwards dropped, but California should
see to it that the island is rechristened in honor of the great sailor
who sleeps there.
Ferrelo later succeeded in sailing as far north as Cape Mendocino and
perhaps as far as 42¡, but, though he kept as close to the shore as
possible, he failed to discover the great bay whose waters, spreading
like a sheet of silver over sixty miles of country, lay hidden just
behind the Golden Gate. Near the Oregon line he was driven back by
storms, and returned to Mexico, where he published a full account of the
voyage.
Drake
In the town of Offenburg, Germany, there is a statue of a man standing
on the deck of a ship, leaning against an anchor, his right hand
grasping a map of America, his left, a cluster of bulbous roots. On
the pedestal is the inscription, “Sir Francis Drake, the introducer of
potatoes into Europe in the year of our Lord 1586.”
While it is doubtful whether this honor really belongs to Drake, an
Englishman, seeing the statue, would be inclined to say, “Is this all
that Germany has to tell of the great captain who led our navy against
the Spanish Armada; the first Englishman to sail around the world;
the most daring explorer, clever naval commander, expert seaman, brave
soldier, loyal friend, and gallant enemy of his time?” A Spaniard, on
the contrary, might well exclaim, “Why did Germany erect a statue to
this terrible man whom our poets call Dragontea [Dragon], this greatest
of all pirates, this terror of the sea?” All this, and more, might be
said of one man, who began life as a ship’s boy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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