" In 1602 and 1603 Sebastian Vizcaino led an expedition of three ships up and down the California coast, with frequent stops on shore where his men spent time with various Indian peoples.  There was sickness on Vizcaino's ships from the moment they set sail, and before the voyage was complete it combined with scurvy to literally shut the voyage down.  Scores of men were incapacitated. . .  Fray Antonio de la Ascension, one of three clergymen who made the voyage with Vizcaino, feared the whole crew was close to death.  But fortunately for the Spanish -- and unfortunately for the natives -- the Indians helped the crippled sailors, offering them 'fish, game, hazel nuts, chestnuts, acorns, and other things. . . . for though but six of our men remained in the said frigate, the rest having died of cold and sickness, the Indians were so friendly and so desirous of our friendship . . .  that they not only did them no harm, but showed them all the kindness possible.''  There can be no doubt that for their kindness the Indians were repaid by plagues the likes of which nothing in their history had prepared them.
        The earliest European mariners and explorers in California, as noted in a previous chapter's discussion of Cabrillo, repeatedly referred to the great numbers of Indians living there.  In places where Vizcaino's ships could approach the coast or his men could go ashore, the Captain recorded, again and again, that the land was thickly filled with people.  And where he couldn't approach or go ashore 'because the coast was wild,' the Indians signaled greetings by building fires -- fires that 'made so many columns of smoke on the mainland that at night it looked like a procession and in the daytime the sky was overcast.'  In sum, as Father Ascension put it, 'this realm of California is very large and embraces much territory, nearly all inhabited by numberless people."  {p.  135}