[8] The "Triunfo de la Cruz" was begun July 16, 1719, and finally
launched at Mulege, near Loreto, Lower California, on the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross, Sept. 14, 1719, on its mission to determine
whether California was an island, as described and delineated in many
official accounts and maps of the period.

[9] The original Proclamation of Commodore Sloat, July 7, 1846, signed
by his own hand, here produced, is preserved in Golden Gate Park Museum,
San Francisco, to whose Curator, Mr. George Barron, it was recently
presented in person as authentic by the lately deceased Rev. S. H.
Willey, the chaplain of the Constitutional Convention of 1849 in Colton
Hall.

[10] See Appendices A and B.

[11] G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the
World (Henry Colburn, London, 1814), part 2, page 150. Langsdorff, of
course, gives it as March 28, 1806, old style, in that year twelve days
earlier than our calendar west of the 180th degree of longitude, and
eleven days earlier than our calendar cast of that degree. H. H.
Bancroft states that "the loss of a day in coming eastward from St.
Petersburg was never taken into account until Alaska was transferred to
the United States" (Bancroft, Hist. of California, II, page 299,
foot-note 9). Certainly, Langsdorff makes no such allowance in his
narrative of old-style dates, and in the only place east of the 180th
parallel where he computes the corresponding new style he adds eleven
days, instead of twelve (Voyages and Travels, II, page 136). Bancroft
adopts the date of April 5th, basing it on the Tikhmenef narrative.
Richman and Eldredge follow him in preferring the Tikhmenef narrative to