Piedra's orders confined him to the east coast of Patagonia, as has been shown in the preceding chapter; but in 1789 Spain sent forth an expedition of much more importance, especially in a scientific point of view.[27]
The ships employed were the _Atrevida_ and _Descubierta_, under the command of the well-known Malaspina, who not only revised Piedra's and Viedma's surveys of Patagonia, but, rounding Cape Horn, explored the greater part of the coast of the Pacific, from its southern extreme to the Russian settlements in the north-west. Malaspina, upon his return, was thrown into a dungeon and deprived of his papers,--why, has never transpired; nor was it till several years afterwards that those admirable charts, the results of his labours, were published by order of Langara, the Spanish Minister of Marine, which have since been so useful to modern navigators in the South American Seas, and will long be an honour to the Spanish navy. Malaspina's name, however, was not permitted to be affixed to them, neither has the journal of his voyage ever been published.
It is only very recently that the details have been discovered at Buenos Ayres of the first portion of his work, viz., the survey, in 1789, of the whole of the northern and southern shores of the Plate, as high up as the Paranã, in which nearly 150 points were fixed by him. In the Appendix all those of any importance will be found, in a tabular form, together with other positions, determined on good authority.
It was this survey, with the soundings afterwards taken by Oyarvide (who lost his life in completing them), that furnished the materials for the chart of the river Plate, officially published at Madrid in 1810: nor was this all that Buenos Ayres owed to Malaspina: upon his return to Valparaiso from the north-west coast, he detached two of his most intelligent officers, Don José Espinosa, and Don Felipe Bauza, well known in this country, to map the road across the pampas; and by them the true positions of Santiago in Chile, of Mendoza, San Luis, the post of Gutierres on the river Tercero, and other points along the line, were, for the first time, determined. Their map, so far as it extends, is the best, and the only one of that line of country, I believe, ever drawn by any one capable of taking an observation.[28]