ning it up with a
spade these rich materials plainly appear mixed with the mould." It is
not strange, if this were the case, that the natives--who, though
apparently gentle and well disposed, were barbarians--should naturally
have possessed the taste so characteristic of a barbarous people, and
have loved to decorate themselves even lavishly with ornaments rudely
fashioned in this rare metal. Yet they seemed to know little of its
value, and to care less for it than for fuss and feathers. Either they
were a singularly stupid race, simpler even than the child of ordinary
intelligence, or they scorned the allurements of a metal that so few are
able to resist.

Drake was not the first navigator to touch upon those shores. The
explorer Juan Cabrillo, in 1542-43, visited the coast of Upper
California. A number of landings were made at different points along the
coast and on the islands near Santa Barbara. Cabrillo died during the
expedition; but his successor, Ferralo, continued the voyage as far
north as latitude 42 deg.. Probably Drake had no knowledge of the discovery
of California by the Spaniards six and thirty years before he dropped
anchor in the bay that now bears his name, and for many years he was
looked upon as the first discoverer of the Golden State. Even to this
day there are those who give him all the credit. Queen Elizabeth
knighted him for his services in this and his previous expeditions;
telling him, as his chronicler records, "that his actions did him more
honor than his title." Her Majesty seems not to have been much impressed
by his tales of the riches of the New World--if, indeed, they ever came
to the royal ear,--for she made no effort to develop the resources of
her territory. No adventurous argonauts set sail for the Pacific coast
in search of gold till two hundred and seventy years later.

There seems to have been a spell cast over the land and the sea. We are
sure that Sir Francis Drake did not enter the Bay of San Francisco, and
that he had no knowledge of its existence, though he was almost within
sight of it. In one of the records of his voyage we read of the chilly
air and of the dense fogs that prevailed in that region; of the "white
banks and cliffs which lie toward the sea"; and of islands which are
known as the Farallones, and which lie about thirty miles off the coast
and opposite the Golden Gate.

In 1587 Captain Thomas Cavendish, afterward knighted by Queen Elizabeth,
touched upon Cap