he carried one hundred and ninety-three
men, and mounted twenty guns."

The exact locality of Drake's Bay was for years a vexed question. So
able an authority as Alexander von Humboldt says: "The port of San
Francisco is frequently confounded by geographers with the Port of
Drake, farther north, under 38 deg. 10' of latitude, called by the Spaniards
the Puerto de Bodega."

The truth is, Bodega Bay lies some miles north of Drake's Bay--or Jack's
Harbor, as the sailors call it; the latter, according to the log of the
Admiral, may be found in latitude 37 deg. 59' 5"; longitude 122 deg. 57-1/2'.
The cliffs about Drake's Bay resemble in height and color, those of
Great Britain in the English Channel at Brighton and Dover; therefore it
seems quite natural that Sir Francis should have called the land New
Albion. As for the origin of the name California, some etymologists
contend that it is derived from two Latin words: _calida fornax_; or, as
the Spanish put it, _caliente fornalla_,--a hot furnace. Certainly it is
hot enough in the interior, though the coast is ever cool. The name
seems to have been applied to Lower California between 1535 and 1539.
Mr. Edward Everett Hale rediscovered in 1862 an old printed romance in
which the name California was, before the year 1520, applied to a
fabulous island that lay near the Indus and likewise "very near the
Terrestrial Paradise." The colonists under Cortez were perhaps the first
to apply it to Lower California, which was long thought to be an island.

The name San Francisco was given to a port on the California coast for
the first time by Cermenon, who ran ashore near Point Reyes, or in
Drake's Bay, when voyaging from the Philippines in 1595. At any rate,
the name was not given to the famous bay that now bears it before 1769,
and until that date it was unknown to the world. It is not true, as some
have conjectured, that the name San Francisco was given to any port in
memory of Sir Francis Drake. Spanish Catholics gave the name in honor of
St. Francis of Assisi. Drake was an Englishman and a freebooter, who had
no love for the saints.

That the Bay of San Francisco should have so long remained undiscovered
is the more remarkable inasmuch as many efforts were made to survey and
settle the coast. California was looked upon as the El Dorado of New
Spain. It was believed that it abounded in pearls, gold, silver, and
other metals; and even in diamonds and precious stones. Fruitless
exp