Hernando De Alarcon, a Spanish navigator of the 16th century, to whom we owe the first certain knowledge concerning the configuration of the peninsula of California. This had previously been held to be an island. Alarcon set sail in the service of the Spanish court May 9, 1540. On the W. coast of America he expected to make a junction with the expedition commanded by Coronado; but the two com-manders missed each other. Alarcon left an inscription on a tree at the place where they should have met, which was discovered by a third Spanish navigator. The inscription was: "Alarcon came to this point; at the foot of the tree are buried letters." These letters conveyed .the intelligence that Alarcon, after having tarried there for some time, had returned to New Spain; that the supposed sea was a gulf; that he had sailed round the Marquis island; and that California was not an island, but a point of land jutting into the Pacific. Alarcon returned to New Spain in 1541, and there drew up his maps and observations. His discoveries and those of Fernando de Ulloa were applied to such good use, that an eminent geographer has said the map of California made in 1541 differs hardly at all from that constructed in our own day.