doc241 - Schoenherr Home Page in Sunny Chula Vista

the story of it was handed down from father to son for many a long year. In the account
of the voyage written by one of Cabrillo's companions, and translated and published by
the Government in a report of the United States Geographic Surveys in 1879, this interesting
statement appears:
"And the following day, in the morning, there came to the ship three large Indians,
and by signs they said that there were traveling in the interior men like us, with beards,
and clothes and armed like those of the ships, and they made signs that they carried
cross-bows and swords, and made gestures with the right arm as if they were throwing
lances, and went running in a posture as if riding on horseback, and made signs that
they killed many of the native Indians, and that for this they were afraid. This people are
well disposed and advanced; they go covered with the skins of animals."
Cabrillo remained but six days in the bay with which his name will be forever associated.
He took observations with such imperfect instruments as he had and located
the place
Page 31
in latitude 34° 20' North. (The true latitude is, of course, 32° 41' 57.6".) This mistake led
to some embarrassment in later times when other navigators tried to find the harbor by
means of Cabrillo's notes. The discoverer sailed away for the North, where he died four
months later, or January 3, 1543, in consequence of a fall on an island which his companions
named in his honor, "Juan Rodriquez." With his last words, he directed his party
to go forward with the original plan of exploration. His grave has never been identified,
but it is interesting to reflect that his dust is mingled with the soil which he discovered.
The accounts of Cabrillo's achievement slowly percolated to Spain by way of
Mexico, but if they produced any excitement it was successfully restrained for a period
of nearly two generations. In these days, when the news of a fresh mineral discovery
sends thousands rushing into the desert on automobiles, or to the frozen wastes of the
Far North in swift steamships, it would seem that human nature in the Sixteenth Century
must have been different if it could receive the news of the discovery of a land like California
without feeling an irresistible impulse of adventure. The difference, however, was
not one of human nature, but of facilities for spreading information and for transporting
men and supplies across distances relatively greater than any now known in all the
spaces of the world. The development of new countries waits upon events. Not in that
time did events call for the utilization of the resources of the Pacific. Fortunately, nature
provides an ample margin of resources for the needs of successive generations. When
there are no more lands to be discovered, the genius of discovery seeks other channels
of expression, and men find new and better ways in which to use lands already in their
possession. The discoverer is with us yet, and he will be with those who come after us;
but he explores the realms of science, or makes his perilous way to new continents of
thought, and so he widens man's dominion of the universe.
It was exactly sixty years before the ships of civilization again appeared off the
coast of Southern California. Charles V. passed away without any serious attempt to
colonize and develop the region, but during the reign of his son and successor, Philip II,
the possibilities of the peninsula of Lower California, and of the northern regions known
as Alta California, were much in the royal mind. It is easy to understand why nothing
was accomplished. Philip, busy with his European politics and with the terrors of the In-