In 1594, Captain Sebastian Cermenon, a Portuguese sailor in the service
of Spain, sailed for the Philippines with orders similar to those of
Gali. In an attempt to survey the coast, he lost his ship, the San
Agustin. It is supposed she struck on one of the Farallones and was
beached in Drake's Bay. From the trunk of a tree they constructed a
boat, called a viroco, and in this the ship's company of more than
seventy persons continued the homeward voyage. The little vessel reached
Puerto de Navidad in safety, and here the commander and part of the
company left it in charge of the pilot, Juan de Morgana, with a crew of
ten men, who brought it into Acapulco on the 31st of January, 1596; a
most remarkable voyage of nearly twenty-five hundred miles by
shipwrecked, sick, and hungry men, crowded into an open boat. With the
loss of the San Agustin, explorations of the California coast by laden
ships from the Philippines came to an end.
Sometime prior to the summer of 1595, the viceroy of New Spain, Don Luis
de Velasco, entered into an agreement with certain persons looking to
the exploration of the coasts of the Californias and the settlement of
the land.
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