hores, which is more
descriptive of Oregon and Washington than California; but only the
sudden transition from tropic heat to chilling northern fogs can
explain the crew's exaggerated idea of cold along the Pacific coast.
Land was sighted at 42, north of Mendocino, and an effort made to
anchor farther north; but contrary winds and a rock bottom gave
insecure mooring. {161} This was not surprising, as it was on this
coast that Cook and Vancouver failed to find good harborage. The coast
still seemed to trend westward, dispelling hopes of a Northeast
Passage, and if the world could have accepted Drake's conclusions on
the matter, a deal of expenditure in human life and effort might have
been saved.

Two centuries before the deaths of Bering and Cook, trying to find that
Passage, Drake's chronicler wrote: "_The cause of this extreme cold we
conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian and American continent,
if they be not fully joined, yet seem they to come very neere, from
whose high and snow-covered mountains, the north and north-west winds
send abroad their frozen nimphes to the infecting of the whole
air--hence comes it that in the middest of their summer, the snow
hardly departeth from these hills at all; hence come those thicke mists
and most stinking fogges, . . . for these reasons we coniecture that
either there is no passage at all through these Northerne coasts, which
is most likely, or if there be, that it is unnavigable. . . . Adde
there unto, that though we searched the coast diligently even unto the
48 degree, yet found we not the land to trend in any place towards the
East, but rather running continually North-west, as if it went directly
to meet with Asia. . . . of which we infallibly concluded rather than
coniectured, that there was none._"

Giving up all idea of a Northeast Passage, Drake turned south, and on
June 17 anchored in a bay now {162} thoroughly identified as Drake's
Bay, north of San Francisco.

The next morning, while the English were yet on the _Golden Hind_, came
an Indian in a canoe, shouting out oration of welcome, blowing feather
down on the air as a sign of dovelike peace, and finally after three
times essaying courage, coming near enough the English to toss a rush
basket full of tobacco into the ship. In vain Drake threw out presents
to allure the Indian on board. The terrified fellow scampered ashore,
refusing everything but a gorgeous hat, that floated out on the water.
Fo