ne had discovered. Magellan sailed on across the Pacific, and reached the Philippine Islands, which he claimed for his sovereign, and which after a brief contention with Portugal, became a part of the Spanish Empire. In his explorations in Mexico, Cortes crossed over to the west coast, and there inaugurated
several expedi-
tions to search for the Strait of Anian. He found no strait, but he found Lower California, which he thought was an island, and which he named California. This was in 1535.
The name, California, he took from a romance written in about 1498 by a Spanish writer named Or-
donez de Montalvo, wherein the story is told of an island
of great riches called California, “lying to the right hand as you sail toward the Indies,” and ruled by black Amazons whose queen was called Califia. In the then current belief as to the location of India, the mythical island of the Spanish romance seemed geographically to coincide with the supposed island discovered by Cortes. Hence the seeming aptness of the name California. Cortes returned to Spain in 1540, Though he had added an empire to the Spanish dominions, he had failed to find the elusive waterway to India. But that search went on. In 1542, Antonio Mendoza, the first Viceroy of Mexico,
sent Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo on an expedition up the west coast of the supposed island of California in search of the strait which everybody believed to exist, but which nobody seemed able to find. Cabrillo, with two small boats, poorly built and badly outfitted, the anchors and iron work of which had been
