The first known mention of the legend of the "Island of California" was in the 1510 romance novel '''' by
Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo—the sequel to Montalvo's more famous tales of , father of Esplandian. He described the island in this passage: Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of
Amazons. It is thought that, because of the widespread popularity of
Las sergas de Esplandián at the time of European exploration of California, that it is reasonable that the book inspired the naming of California. The book's description is also thought to have prompted early explorers to misidentify the
Baja California peninsula as the island in these legends. In 1539, Cortés sent the navigator
Francisco de Ulloa northward along the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Baja California. Ulloa reached the mouth of the
Colorado River at the head of the Gulf, which seemed to prove that the region was a peninsula rather than an island. Ulloa was quoted as having described the land he saw on his expedition as, "High and bare, of wretched aspect without any verdure." that maps of California as an island spread due to copying in the early 1600s, since it is known that cartographers of the time frequently made copies of other maps. Interestingly, the first maps depicting California as an island originated after a series of correct maps. On the return voyage to
Acapulco, Mexico, Friar Antonio's ship was overtaken by Dutch pirates who found and confiscated a map drawn by him that depicted California as an island, effectively leaking state-secret information. Spain was not in the habit of willingly sharing information about their expeditions—in fact, maps produced by Sebastián Vizcaíno, the leader of the expedition that brought friar Antonio de la Ascensión to California, were not published until 1802, two hundred years after the expedition occurred. Shortly after the map was confiscated from Friar Antonio's ship, Dutch maps were published depicting California as an island. At the bottom left corner of a British map from 1630 drawn by Henry Briggs is scribbled "California, sometimes supposed to be a part of the western continent, but since by a Spanish chart taken from Hollanders, it is found to be a goodly island". This stolen map was Friar Antonio's, In fact, explorers like Sebastián Vizcaíno were operating under orders to sail north until they found the Northwest Passage, and only to turn around if the coast veered northwest, which would imply that there was no waterway and the land was actually connected to Asia. However, Cook describes some bad weather in his account around this time, and did continue on to map most of the outer Pacific coastline of North America from modern-day northern California to the
Bering Strait in
Alaska on the same voyage. A key role in changing ideas about California seems to have been played by an overland expedition led by the founding governor of
Santa Fe de Nuevo México,
Juan de Oñate. The expedition descended the Colorado River in 1604 and 1605, and its participants believed that they saw the Gulf of California continuing off to the northwest (presumably behind the
Sierra de Los Cucapah into the
Laguna Salada Basin and
Lake Cahuilla, but was more likely due to the
California flood of 1605, in which the flooded Central and Indio Valley basins did essentially appear to extend the peninsula hundreds of miles northward). Further evidence of the superflood theory can be found in the account of
Nicolás de Cardona, who sailed up the Gulf of California in 1619 to determine if a pearl fishery would prove viable in the region. In his account of the voyage, Cardona claims to have sailed as far north as 34° N, where he observed that the sea continued to separate California from the mainland, writing near the end of his account that “it is now proven that California is a very large island and not part of the continent.” A day prior to this observation, Cardona recorded the passage of a severe storm that nearly drowned the crew, and which may led to the temporary extension of the Gulf. Reports from Oñate's expedition reached Antonio de la Ascención, a
Carmelite friar who had participated in
Sebastián Vizcaíno's explorations of the west coast of California in 1602 and 1603. Ascención was a tireless propagandist in favor of Spanish settlement in California, and his later writings referred to the region as an island. As older maps confirm, Spanish authorities and local residents were well aware where the actual northern terminus of the Gulf of California lay, but by extending the coastline north past
Cape Mendocino and eventually even into
Puget Sound,
Francis Drake's claim of
Nova Albion for England (1579) could be invalidated by the priority of Cortes' claim (1533). The
Jesuit missionary and cartographer
Eusebio Francisco Kino revived the fact that Baja California was a peninsula. While studying in Europe, Kino had accepted the insularity of California, but when he reached Mexico he began to have doubts. He made a series of overland expeditions from northern
Sonora to areas within or near the
Colorado River's delta in 1698–1706, in part to provide a practical route between the Jesuits' missions in Sonoran and Baja California but also to resolve the geographical question. Kino satisfied himself that a land connection must exist, and the 18th century Jesuits generally followed his example. The first report of Kino's discovery and his map from 1701 showing California as a peninsula were sent to Europe by , a Jesuit missionary from
Kamna Gorica (
Duchy of Carniola, now Slovenia). In a June 1701 letter, he wrote about that to his friend Philippus Alberth in Vienna and thus acted as an important intermediary in the dissemination of this knowledge. However, , a military companion on several of Kino's treks, expressed scepticism; European cartographers remained divided on the question. Jesuit missionary-explorers in Baja California who attempted to lay the issue finally to rest included
Juan de Ugarte (1721),
Ferdinand Konščak (1746), and
Wenceslaus Linck (1766). The matter was settled beyond all dispute when the expeditions of
Juan Bautista de Anza traveled between Sonora and the west coast of Alta California in the period of 1774–1776. == See also ==