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ollowing its "discovery"
by Europeans in late 1533 or early 1534, the peninsula now named Baja California
was visited by a variety of explorers and missionaries, few of whom found
much to admire. Jesuit Father Johann Jakob Baegert, who spent 17 years
in Baja as a missionary in the mid-1700s, described the peninsula in harsh
terms, "Everything concerning [Baja] California is of such little importance
that it is hardly worth the trouble to take a pen and write about it. Of
poor shrubs, useless thorn bushes and bare rocks, of piles of stone and
sand, without water or wood...what shall or what can I report?" He further
lamented: "The soil itself consists mostly of sand and fine gravel. For
this reason I had the four walls of my cemetery filled in almost to the
top with soil, to lessen the work of the grave diggers and to spare the
iron tools."
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1866, explorer J. Ross Browne published a description of the place that
showed that its reputation had not improved with time, "All the vegetation
visible to the eye seems to conspire against the intrusion of man. Every
shrub is armed with thorns; the cactus, in all its varieties, solitary
and erect, or in twisted masses, or snake-like undulations, tortures the
traveler with piercing needles and remorseless fangs. Burrs with barbed
thorns cover the ground; the very grass, wherever it grows, resents the
touch with wasp-like stings that fester in the flesh; and poisonous weeds
tempt the hungry animals with their verdure, producing craziness and death.
Add to this the innumerable varieties of virulent reptiles and insects
that infest those desolate regions in summer; the rattlesnakes, vipers,
scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, and sand-flies; the rabid polecats that
creep around the campfire at night, producing hydrophobia by their bite;
the scorching heat of the sun, and the utter absence of water, and you
have a combination of horrors that might well justify the belief of the
old Spaniards that the country was accursed by God." This scene of the
unhappy campers "stampeded by a polecat" illustrated an 1869 magazine article
by Browne.
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