e St. Lucas, at the extremity of Lower California. He
was a privateer lying in wait for the galleon laden with the wealth of
the Philippines and bound for Acapulco. When she hove in sight there was
a chase, a hot engagement, and a capture by the English Admiral. "This
prize," says the historian of the voyage, "contained one hundred and
twenty-two thousand _pesos_ of gold, besides great quantities of rich
silks, satins, damasks, and musk, with a good stock of provisions." In
those romantic and adventurous days piracy was legalized by formal
license; the spoils were supposed to consist of gold and silver only, or
of light movable goods.

The next English filibuster to visit the California coast was Captain
Woodes Rogers--arriving in November, 1709. He described the natives of
the California peninsula as being "quite naked, and strangers to the
European manner of trafficking. They lived in huts made of boughs and
leaves, erected in the form of bowers; with a fire before the door,
round which they lay and slept. Some of the women wore pearls about
their necks, which they fastened with a string of silk grass, having
first notched them round." Captain Rogers imagined that the wearers of
the pearls did not know how to bore them, and it is more than likely
that they did not. Neither did they know the value of these pearls; for
"they were mixed with sticks, bits of shells, and berries, which they
thought so great an ornament that they would not accept glass beads of
various colors, which the English offered them."

The narrator says: "The men are straight and well built, having long
black hair, and are of a dark brown complexion. They live by hunting and
fishing. They use bows and arrows and are excellent marksmen. The women,
whose features are rather disagreeable, are employed in making
fishing-lines, or in gathering grain, which they grind upon a stone. The
people were willing to assist the English in filling water, and would
supply them with whatever they could get; they were a very honest
people, and would not take the least thing without permission."

Such were the aborigines of California. Captain Woodes Rogers did not
hesitate to take whatever he could lay his hands on. He captured the
"great Manila ship," as the chronicle records. "The prize was called
Nuestra Senora de la Incarnacion, commanded by Sir John Pichberty, a
gallant Frenchman. The prisoners said that the cargo in India amounted
to two millions of dollars. S