Spain also has been a claimant. In 1775, Bodega, a Spanish navigator,
seeking new opportunities to plant the Spanish flag, reached the
parallel of 58° on this coast, not far from Sitka; but this supposed
discovery was not followed by any immediate assertion of dominion.
The universal aspiration of Spain had embraced this whole region
even at an early day, and shortly after the return of Bodega another
enterprise was equipped to verify the larger claim, being nothing less
than the original title as discoverer of the strait between America
and Asia, and of the conterminous continent, under the name of Anian.
This curious episode is not out of place in the present brief history.
It has two branches: one concerning early maps, on which straits are
represented between America and Asia under the name of Anian; the other
concerning a pretended attempt by a Spanish navigator at an early day
to find these straits.
There can be no doubt that early maps exist with northwestern straits
marked Anian. There are two in the Congressional Library, in atlases of
the years 1680 and 1717; but these are of a date comparatively modern.
Engel, in his “Mémoires Géographiques,” mentions several earlier,
which he believes genuine. There is one purporting to be by Zaltieri,
and bearing date 1566, an authentic pen-and-ink copy of which is now
before me, from the collection of our own Coast Survey. On this very
interesting map, which is without latitude or longitude, the western
coast of the continent is delineated with a strait separating it from
Asia not unlike Behring’s in outline, and with the name in Italian,
_Stretto di Anian_. Southward the coast has a certain conformity with
what is now known to exist. Below is an indentation corresponding to
Bristol Bay; then a peninsula somewhat broader than that of Alaska;
then the elbow of the coast; then, lower down, three islands, not
unlike Sitka, Queen Charlotte, and Vancouver; and then, further south,
is the peninsula of Lower California. Sometimes the story of Anian
is explained by the voyage of the Portuguese navigator Gaspar de
Cortereal, in 1500, when, on reaching Hudson Bay in quest of a passage
round America, he imagined that he had found it, and proceeded to name
his discovery “in honor of two brothers who accompanied him.” Very soon
maps began to record the Strait of Anian; but this does not explain the
substantial conformity of the early delineation with the reality, which
seems truly remarkable.
The other branch of inquiry is more easily disposed of. This turns
on a Spanish document entitled “A Relation of the Discovery of the
Strait of Anian, made by me, Captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, in the
Year 1588.”[5] If this early account of a northwest passage from the
Atlantic to the Pacific were authentic, the whole question would be
settled; but recent geographers indignantly discard it as a barefaced
imposture. Clearly Spain once regarded it otherwise; for her Government
in 1789 sent out an expedition “to discover the strait by which Laurent
Ferrer Maldonado was supposed to have passed, in 1588, from the coast
of Labrador to the Great Ocean.”[6] The expedition was unsuccessful,
and nothing more has been heard of any claim from this pretended
discovery. The story of Maldonado has taken its place in the same
category with that of Munchausen.