Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
Bel and the Dragon‘s chaplains were
More moderate than these by far:
For they, poor knaves, were glad to cheat,
To get their wives and children meat；
But these will not be fobb‘d off so,
They must have wealth and power too；
Or else with blood and desolation
They‘ll tear it out o‘ th‘ heart o‘ th‘ nation.--
HUDIBRAS.
Notwithstanding the success of the many daring and lawless adventurers who visited the Pacific Ocean, or "Great South Sea," as it is called in the maps and travels of the period, and who reaped many a golden harvest there, about the time of the first James and Charles of England, the coasts washed by its waves were but seldom visited, and its waters seldom ploughed by any other keels than those of discovery ships for many years. Chili, Peru, Mexico, and California, after having been definitively ceded to the Spanish crown, constituted an El Dorado, whose gates could only be opened by a formal declarati

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