At four p.m on that long ago day, Captain Heceta, after receiving a signal of good port....ordered the anchor raised. The Santiago then proceeded into the small harbor (Trinidad harbor) studded with projecting rocks). The Spaniards saw plank houses on the bluff to the south, people standing outside and on the beach below. They did not go ashore that first day.

Darkness fell. The clouds lifted. A solitary Indian come down on the beach. He walked back and forth. Later, a signal fire flared atop a cliff to the south. which was answered by smaller lights from far down the open coast.

Throughout that night and the next day, the Tsurai runner carried the news north. At each village, excited and hurried conferences followed. Curious men, women and children prepared to leave for Tsurai, to see first-hand these white-skinned strangers about whom they had always had so much close and distant knowledge.

That night, Captain Bodega observed: Athough the French Chart shows some large bays, the coast we discovered is rather straight without any bays which can be distinguished." The expedition had also missed San Francisco Bay, as well as Humboldt Bay, and would shortly by-pass the Klamath Estuary.

Aboard the two ships and inside Tsurai's houses and sweathouses, night and silence descended. It was June 9, 1775, two days before the Feast Day of the Holy Trinity. [Next Day]