AJ-032: Drake on the California Coast (1579)

              



1579]    DRAKE
IN    CALIFORNIA    
55

against us, having once gotten us under sayle
againe, com-
manded us to the Southward whether we would
or no.
    From the height of 48
deg., in which now we were, to 38,
 we found the land, by
coasting alongst it, to bee but low and
 reasonable
plaine; every hill (whereof we saw many, but none
 verie
high), though it were in June, and the sunne in his
neerest
 approch unto them, being covered with
snow.
    In 38 deg. 30 min. we fell
with a convenient and fit har-
borough, and June 17 came
to anchor therein, where we con-
tinued till the 23 day
of July following. During all which
time, notwithstanding
it was in the height of summer, and so
neere the sunne,
yet were wee continually visited with like
nipping colds
as we had felt before; insomuch that if violent
exercises
of our bodies, and busie employment about our
nec-
essarie labours, had not sometimes compeld us to the
contrary,
we could very well have been contented to have
kept about us
still our winter clothes; yea (had our
necessities suffered us) to

    1
Professor George Davidson, of the United States Coast and
Geodetic
Survey, after a careful study of the Narrative
and the coast (Voyages of Dis-
covery and Exploration on
the Northwest Coast of America from 1539 to
1603,
Washington, Government Printing-office, 1887, pp.
214-218), identifies the
harbor entered by Drake with
Drake's Bay, under Point Reyes, about thirty
miles north
of San Francisco. ""Drake's Bay,"" he says, ""is a capital
harbor
in northwest winds, such as Drake encountered.  It
is easily entered, shel-
tered by high lands, and a
vessel may anchor in three fathoms close under the
shore
in good holding ground. ... If he had been inside the Estero
Liman-
tour, of which he could not have detected the
entrance from his vessel, he
would necessarily have been
very close to either shore. And had he seen it,
he would
not have dared to enter it without sounding it out.  It has
only
thirteen feet of water on the bar at the highest
tides, and he would not have
hazarded his vessel in
entering such a doubtful anchorage. Nor would he
have
risked the possibility of attack from the Indians in such a
contracted
place. He doubtless anchored in Drake's Bay,
and the reef in his plan rep-
resents in a crude manner
the reef of the easternmost point of Point Reyes
Head. In
a rough sketch of his anchorage it is called Portus Novae
Albionis.""
On the other hand Edward Everett Hale, in his
""Critical Essay on Drake's
Bay,"" in Winsor's Narrative
and Critical History of America, III. 74-78,
identifies
the ""convenient and fit harbor,"" which Drake entered, with
San
Francisco Bay. The consensus of opinion among
scholars on the Pacific
coast at the present time,
however, is said to be in favor of Drake's Bay,
and such
is also the view expressed by Mr. Corbett in his Drake and
the
Tudor Navy.