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It seems incredible that two hundred and twenty-six years elapsed from Cabrillo's visit to the day the first settlers landed in San Diego, founding the first of the famous missions. Historically, 1769 is surely marked. In this year Napoleon and Wellington were born and civilized California was founded. San Francisco Bay was discovered by a land party.
No maps or charts of the region showing where lay good harbors or dangerous rocks, could be found in Cabrillo's cabin. Instead, there were maps of this South Sea which pictured terrible dangers for mariners great whirlpools which could suck down whole fleets of vessels, and immense waterfalls, where it was thought the whole ocean poured off the end of the land into space.
They speak of Cabrillo's discovery of California in 1542, of the founding of the Mission of San Francisco by Moraga, in 1776, of the acquisition of California by the United States, 1846, and its admission to the Union in 1850. The sculpture carries out the same idea.
"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.
A mere baby she was, too young to know aught of her misfortune, yet a princess royal, rudely dispossessed of her right to the throne of Spain, and smuggled aboard the adventurer Cabrillo's ship to be dropped in some out-of-the-way corner of the western world.
Fletcher seemed not to know of Cabrillo's voyage, for he claimed that no one had ever discovered land in this region, or for many degrees to the south; while in fact Ferrelo with Cabrillo's ships had sailed as far north as latitude 42i, although we have no reason to think that he landed in a higher latitude than that of Point Conception and San Miguel Island.
Here we will make a slight digression for the sake of our story. In 1548, just twenty-seven years after Cortes discovered the land of Mexico, Cabrillo's expedition had sailed up the Coast of California, and in 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino had made further discoveries accompanied by two Carmelite priests, and landed on the shores of Monterey.
Not waiting for the return of the San Tomas, Vizcaino with his two ships soon sailed northward, and reached a point in about latitude 42i, which was probably the northern limit reached by Cabrillo's ships and only a little lower than the farthest explorations of Drake.
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