Dawn and the Dons/AN ELUSIVE HARBOR
CHAPTER V
AN ELUSIVE HARBOR
PORTOLA’S the Harbor instructions were of Monterey, to find and there establish a Mission and a Presidio and found a colony. Like a good soldier, he desired to carry out his instructions, and his initial task was, of course, to find the harbor. Information concerning its location was rather meagre, save that he knew it was on the California coast, and was supposed to be at about 37 degrees North Latitude. Costanso, the engineer of the party, had two books upon which was placed the main reliance for means of identifying Vizcaino’s “Noble Harbor.” One was an account of Vizcaino’s voyage of a century and a half previous, written by one Venegas, and based on a prior account written by Torquemada; and the other was a manual of navigation by Cabrero Bueno, a celebrated galleon pilot. But Portola was making his approach by land, and not by sea, and the only information these books contained that was of much value to the land party was the supposed latitude of the harbor, and Vizcaino’s description of it as filtered through Venegas and Torquemada.
Portola’s party got away from San Diego on July 14, 1769, and Constanso, who kept a diary, gives us the order of march, and the daily routine. “At the head of the party went Portola with most of the officers, the eight men of the Catalonian volunteers, and some friendly In-
dians with spades, mattocks, crowbars, axes and other
pioneering implements, to chop open a passage whenever necessary. Then came the pack-train in four divisions, each with muleteers and escort of soldiers. Therear was closed by the remainder of the troops under Riveray Moncada, who convoyed the horse drove and the muledrove for relays. By the necessity of regulating marches with reference to watering places, camp was pitched early each afternoon, so that the land might be explored one day for the next; and at four days intervals, moreor
less general fatigue, or the recovery of animals stampeded by a coyote or the wind, compelled a halt more protracted.” For seventy-eight days, Portola and his fellow adventurers laboriously made their way through a country never before trodden by a white man’s foot, with mountain barriers and other natural obstacles, and watched by native tribes not always friendly. Indeed, shortly after Portola left San Diego, that camp was attacked by Indians of the Yuma tribe, and in the ensuing fight, two Yumas and one Spaniard were killed, and Vizcaino, the Franciscan, was wounded by an arrow that pierced his hand. As Portola proceeded further north, the Indians were found to be less hostile, and more easily brought into friendly relations. The route traversed by this party, as carefully worked out by Zoeth S. Eldridge, and confirmed by later historians, was as follows: “By the seashore past San Clemente and Catalina islands, to the site of the present city of Los Angeles; thence through the
San Fernando valley to the headwaters of the Santa Clara river; thence by the river valley to the sea again; thence past Points Conception and Sal to the extremity of the Santa Barbara Channel; thence inland to the site
of the Mission of San Luis Obispo;.thence through the Canada de los Osos to the sea at Morro Bay, and up the coast till progress was barred by the Sierra de Santa Lucia at Mount Mars. The Sierra crossed, the route lay by the Salinas river valley to the sea.” The latter point was reached September 30, 1769. The Salinas river, it should be noted, empties at a point on the crescent shore of Monterey Bay between Monterey and Santa Cruz, nearly twenty miles distant from where Vizcaino had landed. There were here, of course, none of the landmarks
described in Vizcaino’s log, or in his official report. Clearly then, this was not the port that Portola had been directed to find, though the latitude was reckoned by Constanso to be near that recorded by Vizcaino. So they went on slowly and watchfully northward, following the coastline, and on November first, a scouting party under Sergeant Ortega, came upon San Francisco Bay. Several historians, including Charles E. Chapman, who is unusually accurate, believe that Ortega, on that day, looked across the Golden Gate. What he saw proved to be an extensive body of water, but Portola was not interested. He was looking for the port of Monterey, and this clearly was not it. It does seem strange that Portola should have paid so little attention to this natural harbor, which was destined to become the greatest seaport on the Pacific coast of the western hemisphere. The truth is—and this partly explains Portola’s apathy— that the entire party were footsore and weary, both Portola and Rivera had fallen ill, many of his men were sick with scurvy, and provisions were running low. And Portola’s mind was on the object of his search. Such was the condition of affairs when they turned back and made their way again to the mouth of the Salinas river; and then followed a series of happenings that seemed to indicate bewilderment in the minds of