The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883Drake, Samuel Adams
History
The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883
Drake, Samuel Adams
America -- Discovery and exploration; West (U.S.) -- History
Spain complained. Elizabeth listened with impatience. When the Spanish
ambassador insisted on his master's sole right to navigate the western
ocean, the Queen lost her temper. She roundly told Mendoza that "the
sea and air are common to all men." Yet the claim itself shows what
mighty hold Spain had on the other powers. In eight years the question
was fought out in the English Channel with all Europe for spectators.
Spain was so sure of victory, that the popular feeling even got into
the nursery rhymes of the day. A child is supposed to be saying,
"My brother Don John
To England is gone,
To kill the Drake,
And the queen to take,
And the heretics all to destroy."[7]
[Illustration: DRAKE SAILS AWAY.]
Drake had perhaps done as much as any man to bring about the issue. He
was there in the thick of the fight.[8]
So the spell of Spanish invincibility was broken at last. Spain was no
longer mistress of the seas.
Next on her brilliant roll of navigators, comes Juan de Fuca, who (1592)
discovered the straits that now bear his name. Spain still wanting a
harbor in which the Manila galleons could refit when homeward bound,
Sebastian Vizcaino (1602-1603), sometimes called "the Biscayner,"
entered the haven of San Diego, and that of Monterey,[9] which he then
named, as he also did the one lying within Point Reyes, called by him
Port San Francisco.[10] Exploration of this coast then ceased for a
century and a half.
The real advance into California (1768), like all other Spanish
movements on this continent, originated in a half-monkish, half-military
plan for the conquest, conversion and civilization of the country.
Enough was known of its soil and climate to show how far both exceeded
the sterile steppes of New Mexico, where Spanish advance had already
reached its farthest limit, and like a stream that meets an obstacle
in its path, was turned into another channel. For where plants grow and
rivers flow, God has fixed the abodes of men.
This movement began[11] from the missions of Lower California. It was
designed to extend the system by which Spain had first conquered, and
since ruled, Mexico into the unoccupied and little-known province of
Alta, or Upper, California. The viceroy was to furnish soldiers, the
president-prelate of the Franciscan order, missionaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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