35A. [PORTOLÁ, Gaspar de]. Noticias de California. First Report of the Occupation by the Portolá Expedition, 1770.... San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1958. 53 pp., folding maps, facsimiles of the 4to and folio editions of the Estracto de Noticias, illustration of Presidio de Monterey. Small folio, original cloth-backed grey boards. Very fine in d.j.
          Limited edition (400 copies).    ($30-60)

Born of the great tale of chivalry the Sergas de Esplandián as the island of Queen Calafia decades prior to its discovery, California engendered extraordinary curiosity throughout its early history. Unlike other regions discovered by Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, California resisted occupation for a century and a half following the first attempt at settlement by Fernando Cortés. Even following successful permanent foundations established by the Society of Jesus after 1697, California was the distant edge of the Spanish Empire and was, at best, a marginal province. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits, in 1768 Visitor General José de Gálvez initiated plans for the occupation of Alta California, unexplored since 1602. Through the creation of a naval department at San Blas, this advance could avail itself of more rapid maritime travel coupled with overland expeditions under Gaspar de Portolá and Franciscan Fray Junípero Serra from the California peninsula.
          Following the establishment of a base at San Diego on July 14, 1769, Portolá departed to explore by land northward through the more temperate coastal regions of Alta California. Seen by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542 and explored and charted by Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602, Monterey, with an adequate harbor for ships of the period and abundant supplies of fresh water, timber, game, and fish, was considered an appropriate site for securing Spanish control of the northern Pacific Coast. Accompanying Portolá was a fellow Catalán, Miguel Costansó, an officer of the Royal Corps of Engineers and professional cartographer and draughtsman. The sole description of the bay of Monterey was that made from the sea in 1602 and published in Manila in 1734 by José González Cabrera Bueno in the Navegación especulativa y práctica, and, as a result, it was bypassed on the march northward and was not identified until the return southward from the bay of San Francisco where the Golden Gate halted further advance.
          Upon the expedition’s return to San Diego on January 24, 1770, Costansó returned to Monterey by sea with Father Serra in May and was met by Portolá and Lieutenant Pedro Fagés who had returned overland. With the establishment of the presidio of Monterey and mission San Carlos Borromeo, Portolá and Costansó sailed for San Blas in July and proceeded to Mexico City which they reached on August 10. Their report to Viceroy Marqués de Croix of the success of the expeditions and establishment of Monterey marked the completion of a long-desired goal of Spanish colonization, and resulted in the almost immediate publication of a greatly abridged description in the Estracto de Noticias del Puerto de Monterey..., dated six days following the arrival of Portolá and Costansó at the viceregal court.
          This first publication relative to what is today the State of California appeared in two versions, one in folio of three leaves, and another in small quarto of four leaves. The folio version probably preceded the latter and was evidently of a very short press run in that it is far more rare than the latter. The Estracto... appeared in translation in The Official Account of the Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770, ed. Frederick J. Teggart (Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, 1:2; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1909), and was reset in modern type in an edition of 225 copies in Madrid, José Porrúa Turanzas, Editor, 1959.

——W. Michael Mathes