Quite as important as these northern coastal reconnaissances, indeed a good deal more important until well after the middle of the eighteenth century, was the discovery of the open-sea routes between the Spanish centres on the eastern- 116 -shores of the Pacific. The Doldrums, the belt of equatorial light variable winds and calms, and the remarkably strong and persistent Humboldt or Peru Current running northwards from about 45°S to the Equator, closely parallel to the coast, are major obstacles to easy communication by sail. For most of the year, but especially in the northern summer, the westerly bulge of South America has prevailing south or southeasterly winds; and these conditions persist far south of Arica, where the coast takes a straight north-south trend. From the Isthmus to southern Mexico winds are weak and uncertain, with spells (often lengthy) of calms. In the northern winter, conditions are marginally better: Mexican and Nicaraguan waters have light winds from northeast to northwest, with occasional storms, ‘Tehuantepeckers’ or ‘Papagallos’, from north; while as far south as Ecuador there is a better chance of picking up a northerly wind, and from January to March there actually may be a southwards current (el Niño) for a short distance on either side of the Gulf of Guayaquil. ‘El Niño’ (so called from its advent about the feast of the Christ-child) is irregular in occurrence (though this is disputed) and is of less significance for navigation than as bringing heavy rains to the coast, leading to floods on land, and at sea, owing to an influx of warm water from the north, to catastrophic if temporary disruption of Peruvian fisheries.^[17]

It follows that at least as far north as the Isthmus, sailing north is at all times easier than sailing south; indeed, while from April to September the passage Callao-Guatulco could often be made in four to six weeks, the reverse voyage could take seven or eight months. The normal time in the favourable (northern winter) season was two or three months, keeping fairly close to the coast (to keep the light northerlies) as far as the Gulf of Panama, then sailing (or trying to) south, perhaps as far as a sight of the Galapagos Islands. Landfall was made near Manta, a wretched little town (only seventeen vecinos in 1570) about 1°S, or at Santa Elena or Isla de Puna: these were better placed for shelter, water, food, and timber (with asphalt for caulking at Santa Elena), and served as outports for Guayaquil, whose deltaic approaches were difficult for ocean-going ships. The Galapagos themselves were accidentally discovered in 1535 by Bishop Tomas de Berlanga, on his way to Peru; perhaps the only prelate to make such a discovery, if we discount St Brandan.… This route ‘on the meridian’ was at any rate better than following the coast: near Manta the Bishop met people who had been on a galleon from Nicaragua for eight months. Little wonder that the run from New Spain to the Philippines was considered much easier than that to Peru.

In the unfavourable season, the voyage to Peru could be made ‘on the parallel’, striking south across the Trades to 30°S (or, later, even as far as Juan Fernandez, 30°42′S) and then northeast to pick up the southerly winds or currents of the Peruvian coast. This route was probably discovered about 1540–4, by a pilot with Cortes's man Diego de Ocampo; but as it still took three or four months, it seems to have been all but forgotten later in the century. In the good season, there was not a great gain in time over the meridian route, but in later colonial days the ‘parallel’ track, was used when ships could not wait for the opening- 117 -of the normal sailing season. Its analogue farther south, Juan Fernandez’ course from Callao to Chile, was more significant.

Between the discoveries of these two open-sea routes, notable work was done in the maze of channels and islands along the stormy fiord coast of Chile south of Chiloé: a most intricate and hazardous navigation, on shores still imperfectly known in the first half of this century, and indeed not giving up all their secrets until the advent of aerial survey.^[18] The first southern voyage, under Francisco de Ulloa and Cortes Ojea, in 1553–4, penetrated thirty leagues into the Straits of Magellan, but was surpassed as a feat of seamanship four years later by that of Juan Ladrillero and Ojea, which left Valdivia or Concepcion on 17 November 1557, with three very small ships and sixty men—commissioned, amongst other things, to look for spices! (This may not be as absurd as it looks, since there may well have been reports of the cinnamon-like ‘Winter's bark’, so named for Drake's captain, and so useful to Sarmiento's wretched colonists.) Ojea, the almirante, became separated, and reached nearly to the Straits; but he missed the entrance, and jumped to the conclusion that some island torn from its moorings by tempest had grounded and jammed the channel—presumably the origin of the idea that the Straits had been blocked by an earthquake. Unfortunately, the poet Ercilla gave currency to the myth in the opening canto of his very popular epic La Araucana (1569); it at least reflects the fact that a major hindrance to the west-east passage was the difficulty of identifying the right entrance in this maze of inlets. On the return journey from his farthest fiord, still called ‘Ultima Esperanza’, Ojea wintered in extremely harsh conditions, living largely on seaweeds, the staple of the local Indians; these were thievish, but friendly, presenting the Spaniards with packets of coloured earth so that they could paint themselves decently. After rebuilding his bergantin, Ojea reached Valdivia on 1 October 1558. Meanwhile, Ladrillero went down the wild western coast of the Fuegian archipelago to the Canal Santa Barbara in 54°S, and then penetrated the Straits to the Atlantic end. He wintered in more comfort than Ojea and was back in Concepcion by mid-1559, bringing ‘a detailed account of the hydrography of the Chilean archipelagoes and the Strait of Magellan which was not improved on until the nineteenth century’,^[19] except perhaps by parts of Sarmiento's survey. Obscure voyages, all but forgotten, but resolute and daring.

Fray Reginaldo de Lizarraga tells of a Santiagueño ‘conceived and born at sea’ on the Callao-Chile run, ‘and his mother became pregnant again, and still they had not reached the port of Coquimbo.’^[20] A good story, which at least emphasises the contrast between the northwards passage, running with winds and current, taking only three or four weeks, and the southwards, at best as many months, and sometimes the greater part of a twelvemonth. The discoverer of the open-sea route which circumvented these inordinate delays was one of the twenty-six people, several of them sailors, living in Santiago de Chile in the 1570s, and all named Juan Fernandez; the meticulous researches of José Toribio- 118 -Medina have narrowed the field to one.^[21] He also discovered the island long named after him, but since 1966, by official decree of the Republic of Chile, styled Robinson Crusoe's Island.

Juan Fernandez seems to have come to Chile about 1550–1, and in the next twelve years had much experience, as boatswain and later master, in navigation between Peru and Chile. In February 1574 he was in command of the Nuestra Señora dos Remedios from Valparaiso to Callao; and when, on 27 October 1574, he took her out on the return, there can be scarcely any doubt that his southwestwards track—into the open Pacific—was deliberate. The wind regime on the coast is such that he could hardly have been blown off-shore; on the other hand, he was a close friend of Gallego, Mendaña's pilot on the 1567 voyage to the Solomons, and from him he must have learnt that once out of the mainstream of the Humboldt Current, and well into the Southeast Trades, winds and currents made a good southing much easier than it was close to the coast.

On 6 November Fernandez sighted the barren rocky islands he named San Felix and San Ambor (a Saint so obscure, even to Spaniards, that he was soon replaced by San Ambrosio), and on the 22nd two islands which he named for the day, Santa Cecilia's. These were certainly the group known by his name, but it is not clear whether the two were Mas-a-Tierra and Mas Afuera (‘Nearer Land’ and ‘Further Away’) or the former and the nearby little island of Santa Clara. Thirty days from Callao he reached a Chilean port, either Valparaiso or Concepcion; and there was no further need for embarrassing confinements on board. Although his island did not appear on the maps until early in the next century, his ‘new navigation’ was soon adopted as the standard track.

One of the founders of Santiago, Juan Jufre (who introduced goats to Chile, and hence, at a remove, to Crusoe's Island), backed a reconnaissance in 1575, perhaps under Fernandez, though it is not certain the latter ever set foot on his islands. Nothing came of this, but in 1576 Fernandez was sent by Jufre (who had wanted Sarmiento for command, but that redoubtable figure was in trouble with the Inquisition) to discover ‘the islands which are frontier to this kingdom.’ Knowledge of this expedition rests on one of the memorials with which the highly uncritical Dr Luis Arias sought to revive, in the totally unfavourable climate of Philip III's reign, the grand designs of Mendaña and Quiros for a vast religious imperialism in the South Sea. Fernandez is said to have sailed, from about 40°S, on a westsouthwest course for one month—and to have discovered a land with well-clad white people and many fine rivers. In the eighteenth century this was taken up enthusiastically by Alexander Dalrymple—to whom it must of course have been Terra Australis—and considered more cautiously by James Burney; it has been variously identified as Easter Island, New Zealand, Australia, the Solomons, Tahiti, and (by the Chilean Vicuña Mackenna) as fantasy; which last seems most probable.^[22] Arias himself is most confused, and his evidence is—at best—third-hand; Medina makes a gallant attempt to show that Fernandez found somewhere, say Tahiti, but carries no conviction. At all events,- 119 -what with the Araucanian Wars and Drake's raid nothing could be done—the heretics might hear of it—and any follow-up was put off from day to day until Juan Fernandez died in 1599. The mantle fell on Quiros.

At this point it is convenient to sketch the history of Juan Fernandez Island, and its strategic significance, into the eighteenth century. An ineffectual attempt at colonisation was made in 1591–6, and again in 1599, by Sebastian Garcia, who became a Jesuit and deeded his grant to his Society; in 1642 Tasman proposed that it should be made a Dutch base, and there was a feeble Jesuit attempt at exploiting their claim in the early 1660s.^[23] The earlier Dutch incursions missed the island, but Schouten and Le Maire found it in 1616, and ‘it became thereafter a sought-after haven for navigators of all flags … but most particularly for those who would not find a welcome in the ports of Spanish America’^[24]—which meant any flag but Spain's. Early and late in the period it was a place of refreshment for the Nassau Fleet (1624) and Roggeveen (1722), but above all it was a base for the English (and odd French) buccaneers—Sharp, Wafer, Dampier, Cowley, Cook, Davis, Rogers, Stradling, Shelvocke, Clipperton; only Morgan is missing from the roll-call. For the southeast Pacific it was as potent a magnet as Guam in the west; the South Sea Company had vague plans for ‘the Gibraltar of the Pacific’, and Roggeveen and de Brosses suggested settlement by the Netherlands and France respectively.

Spanish warships visited the islands in occasional defensive flurries, and from time to time left ferocious dogs to kill the goats so valuable to the buccaneers, or at least to drive them to inaccessible heights—a strange defence measure for an empire. But not until 1750, after the visit of the most illustrious corsair of all (after Drake)—Anson—did Bourbon Spain take the logical step of settling and fortifying an island which after all should have been easy to supply, only a few days' sail from Valparaiso. Soon after Anson's stay, Juan and Ulloa, as part of their famous inspection of the Pacific colonies, examined both Mas Afuera and Mas-a-Tierra, and made positive and specific recommendations for the fortification of the latter.^[25] When it was at last done, it was done secretly and effectively: great was the surprise of Philip Carteret, in 1767, to find ‘a great number of men all about the beach’ and Spanish colours flying over a stone fort with a score of embrasures—a far cry from Alexander Selkirk's hut and his ballet of goats and cats.^[26]