[Ill.u.s.tration: Captain George Vancouver.]
Vancouver was still in his prime, under forty. Serving in the navy from boyhood, he had all a practical seaman"s contempt for theories.
This contempt was given point by the world"s att.i.tude toward Cook.
Vancouver had been on the spot with Cook. He knew there was no Northeast Pa.s.sage. Cook had proved that. Yet the world refused credence.
For the practical navigator there remained only one course, and that course became the one aim, the consuming ambition of Vancouver"s life--to destroy the {266} last vestige of the myth of a Northeast Pa.s.sage; to explore the northwest coast of America so thoroughly there would not remain a single unknown inlet that could be used as a possible prop for the schoolmen"s theories, to penetrate every inlet from California to Alaska--mainland and island; to demonstrate that not one possible opening led to the Atlantic. This was to be the object of Vancouver"s life, and he carried it out with a thoroughness that left nothing for subsequent explorers to do; but he died before the record of his voyages had been given to the world.
The two ships, _Discovery_ and _Chatham_, with a supply ship, the _Daedalus_, to follow later, were fitted out for long and thorough work. Vancouver"s vessel, the _Discovery_, carried twenty guns with a crew of a hundred men. The tender, _Chatham_, under Broughton, had ten guns and forty-five men. With Vancouver went Menzies, and Puget, and Baker, and Johnstone--names that were to become place marks on the Pacific. The _Discovery_ and _Chatham_ left England in the spring of 1791. A year later found them cutting the waves from Hawaii for America, the New Albion of Drake"s discovery, forgotten by England until Spain"s activity stimulated memory of the pirate voyage.
A swashing swell met the ships as they neared America. Phosph.o.r.escent lights blue as sulphur flame slimed the sea in a trail of rippling fire; and a land bird, washed out by the waves, told of New Albion"s sh.o.r.e. {267} For the first two weeks of April, the _Discovery_ and _Chatham_ had driven under cloud of sail and sunny skies; but on the 16th, just when the white fret of reefs ahead forewarned land, heavy weather settled over the ships. To the fore, bare, majestic, compact as a wall, the coast of New Albion towered out of the surf near Mendocino. Cheers went up from the lookout for the landfall of Francis Drake"s discovery. Then torrents of rain washed out surf and sh.o.r.e.
The hurricane gales, that had driven all other navigators out to sea from this coast, now lashed Vancouver. Such smashing seas swept over decks, that masts, sails, railings, were wrenched away.
Was it ill-luck or destiny, that caught Vancouver in this gale? If he had not been driven offsh.o.r.e here, he might have been just two weeks before Gray on the _Columbia_, and made good England"s claim of all territory between New Spain and Alaska. When the weather cleared on April 27, the ocean was turgid, plainly tinged river-color by inland waters; but ground swell of storm and tide rolled across the shelving sandbars. Not a notch nor an opening breached through the flaw of the horizon from the ocean to the source of the shallow green. Vancouver was too far offsh.o.r.e to see that there really was a break in the surf wash. He thought--and thought rightly--this was the place where the trader, Meares, had hoped to find the great River of the West, only to be disappointed and to name the point Cape Disappointment. Vancouver was {268} not to be fooled by any such fanciful theories. "Not considering this opening worthy of more attention," he writes, "I continued to the northwest." He had missed the greatest honor that yet remained for any discoverer on the Pacific. Within two weeks Gray, the American, heading back to these baffling tides with a dogged persistence that won its own glory, was to succeed in pa.s.sing the breakers and discovering the Columbia. As the calm permitted approach to the sh.o.r.e again, forests appeared through the haze--that soft, velvet, caressing haze of the dreamy, lazily swelling Pacific--forests of fir and spruce and pine and cypress, in all the riot of dank spring growth, a dense tangle of windfall and underbrush and great vines below, festooned with the light green stringy mosses of cloud line overhead and almost impervious to sunlight. Myriad wild fowl covered the sea. The coast became beetling precipice, that rolled inland forest-clad to mountains jagging ragged peaks through the clouds. This was the Olympus Range, first noticed by Meares, and to-day seen for miles out at sea like a ridge of opalescent domes suspended in mid-heaven.
Vancouver was gliding into the Straits of Fuca when the slender colors of a far ship floated above the blue horizon outward bound. Another wave-roll, and the flag was seen to be above full-blown sails and a square-hulled, trim little trader of America. At six in the morning of April 29, the American saluted with a {269} cannon-shot. Vancouver answered with a charge from his decks, rightly guessing this was Robert Gray on the _Columbia_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The _Columbia_ in a Squall.]
Puget and Menzies were sent to inquire about Gray"s cruise. They brought back word that Gray had been fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca; and--most astounding to Vancouver"s ambitions--that the American had been off the mouth of a river south of the straits at 46 degrees 10 minutes, where the tide prevented entrance for nine days. "The river Mr. Gray mentioned," says Vancouver, "should be south of Cape Disappointment. This we pa.s.sed on the forenoon of the 27th; and if any inlet or river be found, it must be a {270} very intricate one, inaccessible . . . owing to reefs and broken water. . . . I was thoroughly convinced, as were most persons on board, that we could not possibly have pa.s.sed any cape . . . from Mendocino to Cla.s.set (Flattery)."
Keen to prove that no Northeast Pa.s.sage existed by way of the Straits of Fuca, Vancouver headed inland, close to the south sh.o.r.e, where craggy heights offered some guidance through the labyrinth of islands and fog. Eight miles inside the straits he anch.o.r.ed for the night.
The next morning the sun rose over one of the fairest scenes of the Pacific coast--an arm of the sea placid as a lake, gemmed by countless craggy islands. On the land side were the forested valleys rolling in to the purple folds of the mountains; and beyond, eastward, dazzling as a huge shield of fire in the sunrise, a white ma.s.s whiter than the whitest clouds, swimming aerially in mid-heaven. Lieutenant Baker was the first to catch a glimpse of the vision for which every western traveller now watches, the famous peak seen by land or sea for hundreds of miles, the playground of the jagged green lightnings on the hot summer nights; and the peak was named after him.--Mount Baker.
For the first time in history white men"s boats plied the waters of the great inland sea now variously known as Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, Hood Ca.n.a.l. There must be no myth of a Northeast Pa.s.sage left lurking in any of the many inlets of this spider-shaped sea. {271} Vancouver, Menzies, Puget, and Johnstone set out in the small boats to penetrate every trace of water pa.s.sage. Instead of leading northeast, the tangled maze of forest-hidden channels meandered southward. Savages swarmed over the water, paddling round and round the white men, for all the world like birds of prey circling for a chance to swoop at the first unguarded moment. Tying trinkets to pieces of wood, Puget let the gifts float back as peace-offerings to woo good will. The effect was what softness always is to an Indian spoiling for a fight, an incentive to boldness. When Puget landed for noon meal, a score of redskins lined up ash.o.r.e and began stringing their bows for action.
Puget drew a line along the sand with his cutla.s.s and signalled the warriors to keep back. They scrambled out of his reach with a great clatter. It only needed some fellow bolder than the rest to push across the line, and ma.s.sacre would begin. Puget did not wait. By way of putting the fear of the Lord and respect for the white man in the heart of the Indian, he trained the swivel of the small boat landward, and fired in midair. The result was instant. Weapons were dropped.
On Monday, midday, June 4, Vancouver and Broughton landed at Point Possession. Officers drew up in line. The English flag was unfurled, a royal salute fired, and possession taken of all the coast of New Albion from lat.i.tude 39 to the Straits of Fuca, which Vancouver named Gulf of Georgia. Just a month before, Gray, the American, had preceded this act of {272} possession by a similar ceremony for the United States on the banks of the Columbia.
The sum total of Vancouver"s work so far had been the exploration of Puget Sound, which is to the West what the Gulf of St. Lawrence is to the East. For Puget Sound and its allied waters he had done exactly what Carrier accomplished for the Atlantic side of America. His next step was to learn if the Straits of Fuca leading northward penetrated America and came out on the Atlantic side. That is what the old Greek pilot in the service of New Spain, Juan de Fuca, had said some few years after Drake and Cavendish had been out on the coast of California.
Though Vancouver explored the Pacific coast more thoroughly than all the other navigators who had preceded him,--so thoroughly, indeed, that nothing was left to be done by the explorers who came after him, and modern surveys have been unable to improve upon his charts,--it seemed his ill-luck to miss by just a hair"s breadth the prizes he coveted.
He had missed the discovery of the Columbia. He was now to miss the second largest river of the Northwest, the Fraser. He had hoped to be the first to round the Straits of Fuca, disproving the a.s.sumption that they led to the Atlantic; and he came on the spot only to learn that the two English traders, Meares and Barclay, the two Americans, Kendrick and Gray, and two Spaniards, Don Galiano and Don Valdes, had already proved {273} practically that this part of the coast was a large island, and the Straits of Fuca an arm of the Pacific Ocean.
Fifty Indians, in the long dugouts, of grotesquely carved prows and gaudy paint common among Pacific tribes, escorted Vancouver"s boats northward the second week in June through the labyrinthine pa.s.sageways of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To Peter Puget was a.s.signed the work of coasting the mainland side and tracing every inlet to its head waters. Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre the way out of the Pacific. On both sides the sh.o.r.es now rose in beetling precipice and steep mountains, down which foamed cataracts setting the echo of myriad bells tinkling through the wilds. The sea was tinged with milky sediment; but fog hung thick as a blanket; and Vancouver pa.s.sed on north without seeing Fraser River. A little farther on, toward the end of June, he was astonished to meet a Spanish brig and schooner exploring the straits. Don Galiano and Don Valdes told him of the Fraser, which he had missed, and how the Straits of Fuca led out to the North Pacific. They had also been off Puget Sound, but had not gone inland, and brought Vancouver word that Don Quadra, the Spanish emissary, sent to restore to England the fort from which Meares, the trader, had been ousted, had arrived at Nootka on the other side of the island, and was waiting. The explorers all proceeded up the straits together; but the little Spanish crafts were unable {274} to keep abreast of the big English vessels, so with a friendly cheer from both sides, the English went on alone.
Strange Indian villages lined the beetling heights of the straits. The houses, square built and of log slabs, row on row, like the streets of the white man, were situated high on isolated rocks, inaccessible to approach except by narrow planking forming a causeway from rock walls across the sea to the branches of a tree. In other places rope ladders formed the only path to the aerial dwellings, or the zigzag trail up the steep face of a rock down which defenders could hurl stones.
Howe"s Sound, Jervis Ca.n.a.l, Bute Inlet, were pa.s.sed; {275} and in July Johnstone came back with news he had found a narrow channel out to the Pacific.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Discovery on the Rocks.]
The straits narrowed to less than half a mile with such a terrific tide wash that on Sunday, July 29, the ships failed to answer to the helm and waves seventeen feet high dashed over decks. Progress was made by hauling the boats alongsh.o.r.e with ropes braced round trees. By the first of August a dense fog swept in from the sea. The _Discovery_ crashed on a sunken rock, heeling over till her sails were within three inches of water. Ballast was thrown overboard, and the next tide-rush lifted her. By August 19 Vancouver had proved--if any doubt remained--that no Northeast Pa.s.sage was to be found by way of the Straits of Fuca.[1] Then, veering out to sea at midnight through squalls {276} of rain, he steered to Nootka for the conference with Spain.
Vancouver came to Nootka on the 28th of August. Nootka was the grand rallying place of fur traders on the Pacific. It was a triangular sound extending into the sh.o.r.es of Vancouver Island. On an island at the mouth of the sound the Spaniards had built their fort. This part of the bay was known as Friendly Cove. To the north was Snug Cove, where Cook had anch.o.r.ed; to the south the roadstead of the fur traders.
Mountains rose from the water-line; and on a terrace of hills above the Spanish fort was the native village of Maquinna, the Indian chief.
{277} Here, then, came Vancouver, met at the harbor mouth by a Spanish officer with pilot to conduct the _Discovery_ to the Spanish fort of Nootka. The _Chatham_, the _Daedalus_, Vancouver"s store ship, two or three English fur-trading ships, Spanish frigates bristling with cannon, were already at anchor; and the bright Spanish pennant, red and yellow, waved to the wind above the cannon-mounted, palisaded log fort of Nootka.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Indian Settlement at Nootka.]
Donning regimentals, Lieutenant Puget marched solemnly up to the fort to inform Don Juan de la Bodega y Quadra, representative of Spain, that Captain George Vancouver, representative of England, had arrived at Nootka to await the pleasure of New Spain"s commander. It was New Spain"s pleasure to receive England"s salute; and Vancouver"s guns roared out a volley of thirteen shots to the amaze of two thousand or more savages watching from the sh.o.r.es. Formally accompanied by his officers, Vancouver then paid his respects to New Spain. Don Quadra returned the compliment by breakfasting next morning on board the _Discovery_, while his frigates in turn saluted England by a volley of thirteen guns. In all this solemn parade of formality, Maquinna, lord of the wild domain, began to wonder what part he was to play, and ventured to board the _Discovery_, clad in a garb of nature, to join the breakfast of the leaders; when he was summarily cuffed overboard by the guard, who failed to recognize the Indian"s quality. Don Quadra then gave a grand dinner to the English, to which the irate Maquinna {278} was invited. Five courses the dinner had, with royal salutes setting the echoes rolling in the hills. Seventeen guns were fired to the success of Vancouver"s explorations. Toasts were drunk, foaming toasts to glory, and the navigators of the Pacific, and Maquinna, grand chief of the Nootkas, who responded by rising in his place, gla.s.s in hand, to express regret that Spain should withdraw from the North Pacific. It was then the brilliant thought flashed on Don Quadra to win the friendship of the Indians for all the white traders on the Pacific coast through a ceremonious visit by Vancouver and himself to Maquinna"s home village, twenty miles up the sound.
Cutter and yawl left Friendly Cove at eight in the morning of September 4, coming to Maquinna"s home village at two in the afternoon. Don Quadra supplied the dinner, served in style by his own Spanish lackeys; and the gallant Spaniard led Maquinna"s only daughter to the seat at the head of the spread, where the young squaw did the honors with all the hauteur of the Indian race. Maquinna then entertained his visitors with a sham battle of painted warriors, followed by a mask dance. Not to be outdone, the whites struck up fife and drum, and gave a wild display of Spanish fandangoes and Scotch reels. In honor of the day"s outing, it was decided to name the large island which Vancouver had almost circ.u.mnavigated, Quadra and Vancouver.
When Maquinna returned this visit, there were fireworks, and more toasts, and more salutes. All this {279} was very pleasant; but it was not business. Then Vancouver requested Don Quadra to ratify the international agreement between England and Spain; but there proved to be a wide difference of opinion as to what that agreement meant.
Vancouver held that it entailed the surrender of Spain"s sovereignty from San Francisco northward. Don Quadra maintained that it only surrendered Spanish rights north of Juan de Fuca, leaving the northwest coast free to all nations for trade. With Vancouver it was all or nothing. Don Quadra then suggested that letters be sent to Spain and England for more specific instructions. For this purpose Lieutenant Broughton was to be despatched overland across Mexico to Europe. It was at this stage that Robert Gray came down from the north on the damaged _Columbia_, to receive a.s.sistance from Quadra. Within three weeks Gray had sailed for Boston, Don Quadra for New Spain, and Vancouver to the south, to examine that Columbia River of Gray"s before proceeding to winter on the Sandwich Islands.
The three English ships hauled out of Nootka in the middle of October, steering for that new river of Gray"s, of which Vancouver had expressed such doubt. The foaming reefs of Cape Disappointment were sighted and the north entrance seen just as Gray had described it. The _Chatham_ rode safely inside the heavy cross swell, though her small boat smashed to chips among the breakers; but on Sunday, October {280} 21, such mountainous seas were running that Vancouver dared not risk his big ship, the _Discovery_, across the bar. Broughton was intrusted to examine the _Columbia_ before setting out to England for fresh orders.
The _Chatham_ had anch.o.r.ed just inside Cape Disappointment on the north, then pa.s.sed south to Cape Adams, using Gray"s chart as guide.
Seven miles up the north coast, a deep bay was named after Gray. Nine or ten Indian dugouts with one hundred and fifty warriors now escorted Broughton"s rowboat upstream. The lofty peak ahead covered with snow was named Mt. Hood. For seven days Broughton followed the river till his provision ran out, and the old Indian chief with him explained by the signs of pointing in the direction of the sunrise and letting water trickle through his fingers that water-falls ahead would stop pa.s.sage.
Somehow, Broughton seemed to think because Gray, a private trader, had not been clad in the gold-braid regimentals of authority, his act of discovery was void; for Broughton landed, and with the old chief a.s.sisting at the ceremony by drinking healths, took possession of all the region for England, "having" as the record of the trip explains, "every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had ever entered this river before; in this opinion he was confirmed by Mr. Gray"s sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr.
Gray either saw or was ever within five leagues of the entrance."
{281} Any comment on this proceeding is superfluous. It was evidently in the hope that the achievement of Gray--an una.s.suming fur trader, backed by nothing but his own dauntless courage--would be forgotten, which it certainly was for fifty years by nearly all Americans. Three days later, on November 3, Broughton was back down-stream at the _Chatham_, noting the deserted Indian village of Chinook as he pa.s.sed to the harbor mouth. On November 6, in heavy rain, the ship stood out for sea, pa.s.sing the _Jenny_ of Bristol, imprisoned inside the cape by surf. Broughton landed to reconnoitre the pa.s.sage out. The wind calmed next day, and a breach was descried through the surf. The little trading ship led the way, Broughton following, hard put to keep the _Chatham_ headed for the sea, breakers rolling over her from stem to stern, snapping the tow-rope of the launch and washing a sailor overboard; and we cannot but have a higher respect for Gray"s feat, knowing the difficulties that Broughton weathered.
Meanwhile Vancouver on the _Discovery_ had coasted on down from the mouth of the Columbia to Drake"s Bay, just outside the Golden Gate of San Francisco, where the bold English pirate had anch.o.r.ed in 1579. By nightfall of November 14 he was inside the s.p.a.cious harbor of San Francisco. Two men on horseback rode out from the Spanish settlement, a mile back from the water front, firing muskets as a salute to Vancouver. The next morning, a Spanish friar and {282} ensign came aboard the _Discovery_ for breakfast, pointing out to Vancouver the best anchorage for both wood and water. While the sailors went shooting quail on the hills, or amused themselves watching the Indians floating over the harbor on rafts made of dry rushes and gra.s.s, the good Spanish padre conducted Vancouver ash.o.r.e to the presidio, or house of the commandant, back from the landing on a little knoll surrounded by hills. The fort was a square area of adobe walls fourteen feet high and five deep, the outer beams filled in between with a plaster of solid mortar, houses and walls whitewashed from lime made of sea-sh.e.l.ls. A small bra.s.s cannon gathered rust above one dilapidated carriage, and another old gun was mounted by being lashed to a rotten log. A single gate led into the fort, which was inhabited by the commandant, the guard of thirty-five soldiers, and their families. The windows of the houses were very small and without gla.s.s, the commandant"s house being a rude structure thirty by fourteen feet, whitewashed inside and out, the floor sand and rushes, the furnishings of the roughest handicraft. The mission proper was three miles from the fort, with a guard of five soldiers and a corporal. Such was the beginning of the largest city on the Pacific coast to-day.
Broughton was now sent overland to England for instructions about the transfer of Nootka. Puget became commander of the _Chatham_. The store ship _Daedalus_ was sent to the South Seas, and touching only {283} at Monterey, Vancouver sailed to winter in the Sandwich Islands.
Here two duties awaited the explorer, which he carried out in a way that left a streak both of glory and of shame across his escutcheon.
The Sandwich Islands had become the halfway house of the Pacific for the fur traders. How fur traders--riff-raff adventurers from earth"s ends beyond the reach of law--may have acted among these simple people may be guessed from the conduct of Cook"s crews; and Cook was a strict disciplinarian. Those who sow to the wind, need not be surprised if they reap the whirlwind. White men, welcomed by these Indians as G.o.ds, repaid the native hospitality by impressing natives as crews to a northern climate where the transition from semitropics meant almost certain death. For a fur trader to slip into Hawaii, entice women aboard, then scud off to America where the victims might rot unburied for all the traders cared--was considered a joke. How the joke caused Captain Cook"s death the world knows; and the joke was becoming a little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white traders" sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were victims of this plot--to die by the a.s.sa.s.sin"s knife or waiting for the ransom that never came--is not a part of this record. It was becoming a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the {284} islanders, each white held as hostage for the security of the others not escaping. Within three years three ships had been attacked, one Spanish, one American, one English--the store ship _Daedalus_ on the way out to Nootka with supplies for Vancouver. Two officers, Hergest and Gooch of the _Daedalus_, had been seized, stripped naked, forced at the point of spears up a hill to the native village, and cut to pieces. Vancouver determined to put a stop to such attacks. Arriving at the islands, he trained his cannon ash.o.r.e, demanded that the murderers of the _Daedalus"s_ officers be surrendered, tried the culprits with all the solemnity and speed of English court-martial, sentenced them to death, had them tied up to the mast poles and executed. That is the blot against Vancouver; for the islanders had put up a trick. The real murderers had been leading chiefs. Not wishing to surrender these, the islanders had given Vancouver poor slaves quite guiltless of the crime.
In contrast to this wrong-headed demonstration of justice was Vancouver"s other act. At Nootka he had found among the traders two young Hawaiian girls not more than fifteen and nineteen years of age, whom some blackguard trader had forcibly carried off. The most of great voyagers would not have soiled their gloves interfering with such a case. Cook had winked at such crimes. Drake, two hundred years before, had laughed. The Russians outdid either Drake or Cook. They dumped the victims overboard where the {285} sea told no tales.
Vancouver might have been strict enough disciplinarian to execute the wrong men by way of a lesson; but he was consistent in his strictness.
Round these two friendless savages he wrapped all the chivalry and the might of the English flag. He received them on board the _Discovery_, treated them as he might have treated his own sisters, prevented the possibility of insult from the common sailors by having them at his own table on the ship, taught them the customs of Europeans toward women and the reasons for those customs, so that the young girls presently had the respect and friendship of every sailor on board the _Discovery_. In New Spain he had obtained clothing and delicacies for them that white women have; and in the Sandwich Islands took precautions against their death at the hands of Hawaiians for having been on the ship with strange men, by securing from the Sandwich Island chief the promise of his protection for them and the gifts of a home inside the royal enclosure.
April of 1793 saw Vancouver back again on the west coast of America.
In results this year"s exploring was largely negative; but the object of Vancouver"s life was a negative one--to prove there was no pa.s.sage between Pacific and Atlantic. He had missed the Columbia the previous year by standing off the coast north of Mendocino. So this year, he again plied up the same sh.o.r.e to Nootka. No fresh instructions had {286} come from England or Spain to Nootka; and Vancouver took up the trail of the sea where he had stopped the year before, carrying forward survey of island and mainland from Vancouver Island northward to the modern Sitka or Norfolk Sound. Gray, the American, had been attacked by Indians here the year before; and Vancouver did not escape the hostility of these notoriously treacherous tribes. Up Behm Ca.n.a.l the ships were visited by warriors wearing death-masks, who refused everything in exchange for their sea-otter except firearms. The ca.n.a.l here narrowed to a dark canyon overhung by beetling cliffs. Four large war canoes manned by several hundred savages daubed with war paint succeeded in surrounding the small launch, and while half the warriors held the boat to prevent it escaping, the rest had rifled it of everything they could take, from belaying-pins and sail rope to firearms, before Vancouver lost patience and gave orders to fire. At the shot the Indians were over decks and into the sea like water-rats, while forces ambushed on land began rolling rocks and stones down the precipices. One gains some idea of Vancouver"s thoroughness by his work up Portland Ca.n.a.l, which was to become famous a hundred years later as the scene of boundary disputes. Here, so determined was he to prove none of the pa.s.sages led to the Atlantic that his small boat actually cruised seven hundred miles without going more than sixty miles from ocean front. By October of 1793 Vancouver had demolished the myth of {287} a possible pa.s.sage between New Spain and Russian America; for he had examined every inlet from San Francisco to what is now Sitka. While the results were negative to himself, far different were they to Russia. It was Vancouver"s voyage northward that stirred the Russians up to move southward. In a word, if Vancouver had not gone up as far as Norfolk Sound or Sitka, the Russian fur traders would have drowsed on with Kadiak as headquarters, and Canada to-day might have included the entire gold-fields of Alaska.
Again Vancouver wintered in the Sandwich Islands. In the year 1794 he changed the direction of his exploring. Instead of beginning at New Spain and working north, he began at Russian America and worked south.
Kadiak and Cook"s Inlet were regarded as the eastern bounds of Russian settlement at this time, though the hunting brigades of the Russians scoured far and wide; so Vancouver began his survey eastward at Cook"s Inlet. Terrific floods of ice banged the ships" bows as they plied up Cook"s Inlet; and the pistol-shot reports of the vast icebergs breaking from the walls of the solid glacier coast forewarned danger; but Vancouver was not to be deterred. Again the dogged ill-luck of always coming in second for the prize he coveted marked each stage of his trip. Russian forts were seen on Cook"s Inlet, Russian settlements on Prince William Sound, Russian flotillas of nine hundred {288} Aleutian hunters steering by instinct like the gulls spreading over the sea as far east as Bering Bay, or where the coast of Alaska dips southward.
Everywhere he heard the language of Russia, everywhere saw that Russia regarded his explorations with jealousy as intrusion; everywhere observed that Russian and savage had come to an understanding and now lived as friends, if not brothers. Twice Baranof, the little Czar of the North, sent word for Vancouver to await a conference; but Vancouver was not keen to meet the little Russian potentate. One row at a time was enough; and the quarrel with Spain was still unsettled. The waters of to-day plied by the craft of gold seekers, Bering Bay, Lynn Ca.n.a.l, named after his birthplace, were now so thoroughly surveyed by Vancouver that his charts may still be used.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Reindeer Herd in Siberia.]
Only once did the maze of waterways seem to promise a northeast pa.s.sage. It was up Lynn Ca.n.a.l, where so many gold seekers have rushed to have their hopes dashed, like Vancouver. Two officers had gone up the channel in a small boat to see if any opening led to the Atlantic.
Boisterous weather and tremendous tide had lashed the sea to foam. The long daylight was so delusive that the men did not realize it was nearly midnight. At ten o"clock they had rowed ash.o.r.e, to rest from their fight with wave and wind, when armed Indians suddenly rushed down to the water"s edge in battle array, spears couched. The exhausted rowers bent to the oars all night. At one place in their {289} retreat to open sea, the fog lifted to reveal the pa.s.sage between precipices only a few feet wide with warriors" canoes on every side. A crash of musketry drove the a.s.sailants off. Two or three men kept guard with pointed muskets, while the oarsmen pulled through a rolling cross swell back to the protection of the big ships outside.
On August 19, as the ships drove south to Norfolk or Sitka Sound, the men suddenly recognized headlands where they had cruised the summer before. For a second they scarcely realized. Then they knew that their explorations from Alaska southward had come to the meeting place of their voyage from New Spain northward. Just a little more than fifty years from Bering"s discoveries, the exploration of the northwest coast of America had been completed. Some one emitted an incoherent shout that the work was finished! The cheer was caught up by every man on board. Some one else recalled that it had been April when they set out on the fool-quest of the Northeast Pa.s.sage; and a true April"s fool the quest had proved! Then flags were run up; the wine casks brought out, the marines drawn up in line, and three such volleys of joy fired as those sailors alone could feel. For four years they had followed the foolish quest of the learned world"s error. That night Vancouver gave a gala dinner to his crews. They deserved it. Their four years"
cruise marked the close of the most heroic epoch on the Pacific coast.
Vancouver had accomplished his life-work--there {290} was no northeast pa.s.sage through the west coast of America.[2]