Note 1 — Chapter X · 1779-1794 GEORGE VANCOUVER, LAST OF PACIFIC COAST EXPLORERS

The legend of Juan de Fuca became current about 1592, as issued in Samuel Purchas' Pilgrims in 1625, Vol. III: "A note made by Michael Lok, the elder, touching the strait of sea commonly called Fretum Anian in the South Sea through the North-West Passage of Meta Incognita." Lok met in Venice, in April, 1596, an old man called Juan de Fuca, a Greek mariner and pilot, of the crew of the galleon Santa Anna taken by Cavendish near southern California in 1587. The pilot narrated after his return to Mexico, he was sent by the viceroy with three vessels to discover the Strait of Anian. This expedition failing, he was again sent in 1592, with a small caravel in which "he followed the course west and northwest to latitude 47 north, there finding a broad inlet between 47 and 48, he entered, sailing therein more than twenty days … and found very much broader sea than was at the said entrance … a great island with a high pinnacle.… Being come into the North Sea … he returned to Acapulco." According to the story the old pilot tried to find his way to England in the hope of the Queen recouping him for goods taken by Cavendish, and furnishing him with a ship to essay the Northeast Passage again. The old man died before Raleigh and other Englishmen could forward money for him to come to England. Whether the story is purely a sailor's yarn, or the pilot really entered the straits named after him, and losing his bearings when he came out in the Pacific imagined he was on the Atlantic, is a dispute among savants.