these islands would be very pernicious--even laying aside religious motives, which are powerful to the Catholic zeal of the Spaniards. 5. I find another and greater objection to the abandonment of these islands; that is, that the English would securely establish themselves therein, for they have shown themselves eager and greedy for the advantages which the islands present. In that case, they would easily carry on, by way of the Southern Sea, an illicit commerce with Nueva España--where they could land wherever they might please, and without difficulty make themselves masters of the Californias, in order to continue, with this advantage, the discoveries by which they have sought to find a passage to the Eastern Indias by the [route] northwest from Hudson's Bay (called thus from the name of an English captain). With this object there was formed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a company of English merchants, who, as a result of their latest enterprises (in the years 1746 and 1747), [121] have reasonable expectations of finding a way of communication between the Northern and the Southern Seas, according to the critical account of a modern geographer. 6. West of Canada and of the Misisipi River is the great gulf of the Western Sea, [122] which falls [into the ocean] above [i.e., north of] Cape Mendocino; it was discovered by the Spaniard Martin de Aguilar, and it is judiciously conjectured that it extends a considerable distance toward the lands of the northern region in which is situated the strait of Anian, according to the discoveries of the Russians in 1728, 1731, and 1741--which have a certain agreement with those of the aforesaid Aguilar, and especially with those which our admiral Don Bartholome Fuente and his captain Pedro Bernarda made in the year 1640, [123] north of California and northwest from Canada. 7. The former navigated along the coast of California four hundred and ninety-six leguas to the north-northwest, as far as the lake which is called Lake de los Reyes [i.e., "of the Kings"], and reached Canoset; he crossed a lake, and by a river--to which he gave the name Parmentier, which was that of his Spanish interpreter--he arrived at another lake, which he named Fuente; it is one hundred and sixty leguas long and sixty wide. From this point he passed to another lake, called Ronquillo (from the name of a captain in that squadron), and in one of the villages there he learned that at a little distance toward the east there was a ship, in which it was supposed that there were Spaniards; they found an English ship, which had reached that place by the current from Bafin's Bay, or else that of Hudson's Bay.