In Volumes 16 and 17 of the Baja California Travel Series, W. Michael Mathes and John W. Robinson have added to the growing body of primary source material in English on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lower California. The first of these slender volumes provides a translation of the Kino-Atondo journal (1684-1685) known through a copy of the original made by Diego Joseph de Bustos in Mexico City during August 1685, and located today in Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla), Patronato 31, ramo 8. In the introduction to his edition of the Diary, Mathes surveys seaborne exploration of Baja California in the 1500s as well as attempts to settle the peninsula during the first seven decades of the seventeenth century. The governor of Sonora, Isidro de Atondo y Antillón, and his Jesuit colleague, Eusebio Francisco Kino, crisscrossed the peninsula twice during December 1683 and February and March 1685 searching for fertile terrain and possible areas of settlement. Mathes has provided a clear translation of the Diary, along with useful editorial notes on the geography and natural history of Arroyo San Bruno, San Isidro, and San Dionisio.
John W. Robinson’s edition of Fray Tiscareno’s translation of the 1796 survey-log of Captain José Joaquín Arrillaga’s explorations in northern Baja California is an excellent presentation with copious notes and photograph illustrations, of the manuscript now housed in the Bancroft Library. The log occupies seventy-six pages of the present volume ; it is preceded by an introductory section on exploration and settlement of the northern part of the peninsula along with a biographical sketch of José Joaquín Arrillaga (1750-1814) as captain of the presidio of Lorteo and lieutenant governor of the Californias.
Both translations are valuable resource documents for California and Borderlands history, although the limited edition price of ten dollars per volume may be considered excessive.
