Diary of Father Pedro Font

September 28, 1775 - June 2, 1776

Diary of Father Pedro Font, apostolic preacher of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, copied from the notes that he kept on the way, of the journey which he made to Monterey and the port of San Francisco in company with Don Juan Bautista de Anza, lieutenant-colonel of cavalry, captain of the presidio of Tubac, and commander of the expedition for conducting families and soldiers to the new settlement at that port, by order and disposition of His Excellency Frey Don Antonio María Bucareli y Ursúa, lieutenant-general, viceroy, governor, and captain-general of Nueva España, communicated to the reverend father-guardian of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro, Father Romualdo Cartagena, by letter dated January 2, 1775, and made known to me by the father-guardian in letter dated January 20th of the same year, with instructions to accompany the said commander during the whole of the journey, and to take observations for latitude on the road.

A map of the entire journey accompanies this diary; on it the road is marked by dots, the marches are expressed by numbers, and the particular spots or places mentioned in this diary are distinguished by letters of the alphabet. The whole done and executed, on the return from the expedition, at this mission of Ures, in the month of June of the present year, 1776.

Remarks

I wish to point out that in the observations that I was able to take with the astronomical quadrant belonging to the expedition, which the commander carried, I calculated the latitudes by some tables of Don Jorge Juan that, by chance, I was able to obtain. As these tables are for the meridian of Cadiz, and for the years 1756, 1757, 1758, and 1759, they require two corrections; and although the latitudes I set down are in accordance with the observations that I made, endeavoring to employ in the tables the two corrections necessary for the calculation, I record in all the observations the meridian altitude of the lower limb of the sun, as given by the quadrant, for the greater satisfaction of the learned.

I wish to state, furthermore, that there may have been some inaccuracy regarding the directions of the roads because I was unable to get a good compass, and could only obtain a poor, small one, which hardly worked, as a loan from San Xavier del Bac. For this reason, although I used the greatest care in observing the directions which I set down, I am not entirely satisfied with them on account of the defective instrument, and have even tried to correct them in order to make the map in accordance with the latitudes observed.

Finally, I wish to state regarding the leagues which I set down, that I have calculated them according to a measured league which I walked at a marching pace; they are Mexican leagues of five thousand yards or three thousand geometric paces -- all of which I estimated on the journey. Twenty-eight such leagues constitute one degree by land or twenty-three and one-third in an air-line, corresponding to the seventeen and one-half Spanish leagues by land or twenty-one in an air-line, which constitute a degree according to Father Tosca, volume 8, tractate 24, book 1, chapter 4, prop. 23. Spanish leagues consist of four thousand geometric paces or 6666 yards and 2/3 or [2] feet, according to Father Flores in his Clave Geográfica, chapter 3, section 3, number 125.