" 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.
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