Page:The negro trail blazers of California; a compilation of records from the California archives in the Bancroft library at the University of California (IA negrotrailblaze00beas).pdf/23



We are told by historians that for centuries before California was discovered every explorer started out to find the Northwest Passage to the Indies, and the seven cities of Cibolia. These cities were reputed to be rich in turquoise and gold. I think even in this day if explorers were told that somewhere, undiscovered, there were cities with houses of gold and pillars of turquoise, they would sacrifice every thing, even life if necessary, that they might behold such beautiful cities on earth.

Consequently, when Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage of discovery he wrote a letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (original note in "His Level Best" by Hale). This letter contained the following in regard to the South Seas, then undiscovered, and known to us as the Pacific Ocean: "I believe if I should pass under the Equator in arriving at this high region of which I speak, I should find a milder temperature and a diversity in the stars and in the waters. Not that I believe that the highest point is navigable, whence these currents flow, nor that we can mount them, because I am convinced that there is the Terrestrial Paradise, which none can enter but by the will of God.

Immediately following Columbus's letter, Mr. Hale quotes from Dante's "Divina Comedia," and Longfellow's Notes to the "Purgatories" to prove that Columbus had these writings in mind when he made use of the passage referring to the "Terrestrial Paradise, which none can enter but by the will of God." The writer would not attempt to say these writings influenced his words or his great, though unsuccessful, attempt to discover the Northwest Passage or were the cause of his speaking thus, but if we follow the trend of discovery and occupation on this coast we will find Columbus's words like the notes of a beautiful symphony ringing through it all "None can enter but by the will of God." This letter was written by Columbus in the year 1503, and in the year of 1510, there was published in Spain a romance called "La Sergas de Espladian" by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, translator of Amadis of Gaul. In this novel the author speaks of the "Island of California." The name is spelled the same as it is today. It has been said that Cortez had the romance in mind when he discovered and named the peninsula in 1535. For this statement we have the authority of the historian Herrera.

California! What a charm the name carries with it! There seems to be a romantic inspiration in the very pronunciation, but whence did it originate? We are told that for years scholars debated its origin; one tracing it to the Latin, another to the Greek, others claiming that it was given by the natives.

The reading public refused to accept as satisfactory any of the statements offered until after Mr. Edward Everett Hale read a paper before the American Antiquarian Society at a meeting held in Boston, April, 1862. In this paper Mr. Hale told of having read a Spanish romance called "La Sergas de Espladian" by Garcia de Montalvo. In this book the author speaks of the "Island of California," with the same spelling for the name "California." Mr. Hale explained that the failure of the great authors to find the origin of the name "California" was because that "after 1542, no edition of the 'Sergas of Espladian' was printed in Spain so far as we know until 1575, and after that in 1587, and none for two hundred and seventy years more. The reaction had come when the Curate burned the books of Don Quixote. He burned this among the rest. He saved Amadis of Gaul, but he burned Espladian. We will not spare the son for the virtues of the father." These words show Cervante's estimate of it as early as 1605.

Mr. Hale further stated that when he read this romance pertaining to the Island of California, and noted the similarity of spelling, there were only two copies in the world, one copy in Mr. Ticknor's collection in the Public Library of Boston, Mass., and another copy in the Congressional Library in Washington, D. C. Mr. Hale, in "His Level Best," gives a chapter from this romance, an extract of which is now quoted: