Routes of Explorers on the Pacific Coast.Routes of Explorers on the Pacific Coast.
Routes of Explorers on the Pacific Coast.Routes of Explorers on the Pacific Coast.
It was the quest for a passage to the Atlantic that brought Captain James Cook to the Pacific. Before joining the Royal Navy, Cook had been engaged as a captain in the Baltic trade; and from Russian merchantmen he had learned all about Bering's voyage in the North Pacific, which was being quoted by the geographers in proof of an open passage north of Alaska. In the Baltic, too, Cook had heard about the strait of Juan de Fuca, which was supposed to lead through the continent to the Atlantic. At this time all England was agog with demands that the Hudson's Bay Company should find a North-West Passage or surrender its charter. Parliament had offered a reward of £20,000 to any one discovering a passage-way to the Pacific, and Samuel Hearne had been sent tramping inland to explore the north by land. Curiously enough, Cook had been born in 1728, the veryyear that Bering had set out on his first expedition; and he was in the Baltic when news came back to St Petersburg of Bering's death. The year 1759 found him at Quebec with Wolfe. During the next ten years he explored and charted northern and southern seas; and when the British parliament determined to set at rest for ever the myth of a passage, Cook was chosen to conduct the expedition. He was granted two ships—theResolutionand theDiscovery; and among the crews was a young midshipman named Vancouver. The vessels left England in the summer of 1776, and sailed from the Sandwich Islands in 1778 for Drake's New Albion. The orders were to proceed from New Albion up to 65° north latitude and search for a passage to Hudson Bay.
James Cook. From the portrait by Dance in the Gallery of Greenwich Hospital.James Cook.From the portrait by Dance in the Gallery of Greenwich Hospital.
James Cook. From the portrait by Dance in the Gallery of Greenwich Hospital.James Cook.From the portrait by Dance in the Gallery of Greenwich Hospital.
On March 7, 1778—two hundred years after Drake's famous voyage—Cook's ships descried thin, sharp lines of land in the offing. As the vessels drew nearer the coast towering mountains met the gaze of the explorers. Cook had orders to keep a sharp look-out in this region for the strait of Juan de Fuca; but storm drove him off-shore, and, although he discovered and named Cape Flattery at the entrance to the strait that now bears the nameof the old Greek pilot, he did not catch as much as a glimpse of the great bay opening inland. In fact, he set down that in this latitude there was no possibility of Juan de Fuca's strait existing. Landing was made on Vancouver Island at the famous harbour now known as Nootka; and Indians swarmed the sea in gaily painted dug-outs with prows carved like totem-poles. Women and children were in the canoes. That signified peace; and though cannon were manned in readiness, an active and friendly trade at once opened between the crews and the natives. Fifteen hundred beaver and sea-otter pelts were exchanged for a handful of old nails. At least two thousand natives gathered round the two ships. Some of the men wore masks and had evidently just returned from a raid, for they offered Cook human skulls from which the flesh had not been removed, and pointed to slave captives.
Any one who knows Vancouver Island in spring needs no description of the inspiring scene surveyed by the sea-weary crews. Snow rested on the coastal mountains. The huge opal dome now known as Mount Baker loomed up through the clouds of dawn and dusk on the southern sky-line. In fairweather the long pink ridge of the Olympics could be seen towards Puget Sound. Inland from Nootka were vast mountain ridges heavily forested to the very clouds with fir trees and spruce of incredible size. Lower down grew cypress, with gnarled red roots entangling the rocks to the very water's edge, Spanish moss swinging from branch to branch, and partridge drumming in the underbrush. For a month the deep-sea travellers enjoyed a welcome furlough on shore. One night the underbrush surrounding the encampment was found to be literally alive with painted warriors. Cook demanded an explanation of the grand 'tyee' or chief. The Indian explained that these were guards to protect the encampment. However that might be, Cook deemed it well to be off.
On May 1 the ships were skirting the Sitka coast, which Chirikoff and Bering had explored a quarter of a century previously. St Elias, Bering's landfall, was sighted. So was the spider-shaped bay now known as Prince William Sound. The Indians here resembled the Eskimos of Greenland so strongly that the hopes of the explorers began to rise. So keen were they to prove the existence of a passage to the Atlantic that when swords,beads, powder, evidently obtained from white traders, were observed among the Indians, the Englishmen tried to persuade themselves that these Indians must be in communication with the Indians of the domain of the Hudson's Bay Company, forgetting that Russians had been on the ground for forty years. Cook sailed round the coast, past Cape Prince of Wales and through Bering Strait, keeping his prows northward until an impassable wall of ice barred his way. Having now thoroughly explored the coast, Cook was satisfied that Drake and Bering had been right. There was no passage east. He then crossed to Siberia, sailed down the Asiatic coast, and visited the Aleutian Islands. The Russians of Oonalaska and Kamchatka resented the English intrusion on their hunting-ground, while the English refused to acknowledge that they were invading Russian territory.
It was planned to winter and repair the ships at the Sandwich Islands. This part of Cook's voyage does not concern Canada. It was something like a repetition of the transgressions of the Russian outlaw hunters, and was followed by the penalty that transgressors pay. The islanders had welcomed the white men as demi-gods, but the godsproved to have feet of clay. To the islanders a sacred 'taboo' always existed round the burial-graves. Cook permitted his sailors to violate this 'taboo' in order to take timber for the repair of his ships. Perhaps it was a reaction from almost three years of navy discipline; perhaps it was the influence of those seductive southern seas; however that may be, the sailors apparently gave themselves up to riotous debauch. The best of the islanders withdrew disillusioned, sad, sullen, resentful over the violation of their sacred burial-places. Only the riff-raff of the natives forgathered with the riotous crew. When the ships at length set sail with a crew sore-headed from dissipation, by way of a climax to the debauch, a number of women and children were carried along.
Retribution came swift as sword-stroke. The women set up such a wailing that Cook stopped the ships to set them ashore. In the delay of rowing the boats to land a fierce gale sprang up. The wind snapped off the foremast of theResolutionclean to the decks. The two ships had to put back to the harbour for repairs. Not a canoe, not a man, not a voice, welcomed them. The sailors were sullen; Cook was angry; and when the whitemen wanted to trade for fresh food, the islanders would take only daggers and knives in barter. The white men had stolen from their burial-graves. The savages now tried to steal from the ships, and on Sunday, February 14, they succeeded in carrying off the large row-boat of theDiscovery.
Cook landed with a strong bodyguard to demand hostages for the return of the lost boat. The islanders remembered the kidnapping of the women, and refused. Cook was foolhardy enough to order his men to fire on any canoe trying to escape from the harbour. The rest of the episode is so familiar that it scarcely needs telling. A chief crossing the harbour in a skiff was shot. The women were at once hurried off to the hills. The men donned their spears and war-mats. A stone hurled from the rabble running down to the shore struck Cook. Enraged out of all self-control, he shot the culprit dead. In defence of their commander some marines rowing ashore at once fired a musketry volley into the horde of islanders. Cook turned his back to the thronging savages, now frenzied to a delirium, and signalled the marines to cease firing. As he did so, a dagger was plunged beneath his shoulder-blade. He washacked to pieces under the eyes of his powerless men; and four soldiers also fell beneath the furious onslaught.
What need to tell of the wild scramble for the sea; of the war-horns blowing all night in the dark; of the camp-fires glimmering from the women's retreat in the hills? By dint of threat and show of arms and promises, Captain Charles Clerke, who was now in command, induced the islanders to deliver the remnants of Cook's body. In an impressive silence, on Sunday the 21st of February 1779, the coffin containing the great commander's bones was committed to the deep.
The sensational nature of Cook's death, within half a century of Bering's equally tragic fate, while exploring the same unknown seas, spread round the world the fame of the exploits of both. It was recalled that Drake had claimed New Albion for England two centuries before. Then rumours came that the Spanish viceroy in Mexico had been following up the discoveries of both Drake and Bering. One Bruno Heceta from Monterey made report that there were signs of a great turbid river cutting the coast-line north of Drake's New Albion. In spite of Cook'sadverse report, the questions were again mooted: Where was Juan de Fuca's strait? Did it lead to Hudson Bay? Where was this Great River of which both the inland savages and the Spanish explorers spoke? Quebec had fallen. Scottish fur merchants of Montreal had formed the North-West Company in opposition to the Hudson's Bay Company, and were pushing their traders far west towards the Rockies, far north towards the Arctic Circle. Who would be first to find the great unknown river, to fathom the mysteries of Juan de Fuca's strait? Dreaming of these things up in the Athabaska country, Alexander Mackenzie, a trader for the Nor'westers, was preparing to push his canoes down to the Arctic as a preliminary to his greater journey to the Pacific. If Bering's crew, if Cook's crew, both sold half-rotted cargoes of furs for thousands of pounds, how much more easily could trading vessels properly equipped reap fortune from the new El Dorado!
Inland by canoe from Montreal, overland by flat-boat and pack-horse from the Missouri, across the continent from Hudson Bay, round the world by the Cape and the Horn, across the ocean from China—it now became a race to the Pacific. Greater wealth seemed therein furs than had been found in gold in the temples of Peru, or in silver in the mines of Mexico. The struggle for control of the Pacific, which has culminated in our own day, now began. Spain, Russia, England, Canada, and the new-born United States were the contestants in the arena. What has reached its climax in the sluicing of two oceans together at Panama began in the pursuit of sea-otter and seal after the voyages of Bering and of Cook.
The United States had an added motive. On the principle of protecting native shipping, American ports discriminated against British ships, and British ports discriminated against American ships. It was absolutely necessary to their existence as a nation that the United States should build up a merchant fleet. Under fostering laws, with the advantages of cheap labour and abundant timber, a wonderful clipper fleet had been constructed in Massachusetts and Maryland and Virginia ship-yards, consisting of swift sailing-vessels suitable for belting the seas in promoting commerce and in war. The ship-yards built on shares with the merchants, who outfitted the cargo. Builders and merchants would then divide the profits. Under these conditions American traders were penetratingalmost every sea in the world; and the cargoes brought back built up the substantial fortunes of many old Boston families. 'Bostonnais' these swift new traders were called from the Baltic to China. It can be readily believed that what they heard of Cook and Bering interested the Boston men mightily. At all events, they fitted out two ships for the Pacific trade—ships that were to range the seas for the United States as Drake's and Cook's had drawn a circle round the world for England. Captain John Kendrick commanded theColumbia, Captain Robert Gray theLady Washington, and on one of the vessels was a sailor who had been to the North-West coast with Cook. In order to secure Spain's goodwill, letters were obtained to the viceroy of Mexico; and when, in the course of the voyage, these letters were presented to the viceroy of Mexico at San Blas, he honoured them by at once issuing orders to the presidios of Monterey and Santa Barbara and San Francisco to arrest both officers and crew if the Americans touched at any Spanish port. Spain was still dreaming of the Pacific being 'a closed sea.' She took cognizance of Bering's exploits to the north, but she at once strove to checkmate an advance south fromthe north, by herself advancing north from the south. It was in 1775 that Heceta had observed the turbid entrance to a great river and the opening to a strait that might be that of Juan de Fuca. However, on Monday, October 1, 1787, the two American vessels sailed away from Boston. It was August of 1788 before they were off Drake's New Albion; and in the stormy weather encountered all the way up the Pacific, the little sloopLady Washingtonhad proved a faster, better sailer than the heavier cargo vessel, theColumbia. Signs of a river were observed; and a pause was made at one of the harbours on the coast—either Tillamook or Gray's Harbour. Here the Indians, indignant at a recent outrage committed against them by whites, attacked the Americans and drove them off before they could search for an entrance to the Great River. It now became apparent that the small sloop had the advantage, not only in speed, but because it could go in closer to the coast. Towards the end of August Gray's crew distinctly observed the Olympic mountains and set down record of Cape Flattery. 'I am of opinion,' notes the mate, 'that the Straits of Juan de Fucadoexist; for the coast takes a great bend here.'
At Nootka surprise awaited the Americans. John Meares and William Douglas, English captains, were there in a palisaded fort and with two vessels; a little trading schooner of thirty tons named theNorth-West Americahad just been built—the first ship built on the North-West coast—and was being launched amid thunder of cannon and clinking of glasses, and September 19 was observed as a holiday—the first public holiday in what is now British Columbia. Meares and Douglas entertained Gray at dinner, and over brimming wine-glasses gave him the news of recent happenings on the coast. Captain Barkley, another English trader, had looked into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and placed it on his chart. Meares had sought in vain for the River of the West, and did not believe that it existed. In fact, he had named the headland that hid it Cape Disappointment. And, of course, no furs existed on the Pacific coast. When did a fur trader ever acknowledge to a rival that there were furs? Meares reported that he, too, had been down at Tillamook Bay; and Gray guessed that it had been Meares's injustice to the Indians that provoked the raid on himself. Meares was short of provisions, and theLady Washingtonneededrepairs. The American gave the Englishman provisions to reach China, and the Englishman repaired the American's ship. Meares declared that he had bought all Nootka from the Indians. He did not relate that he had paid only two pocket-pistols and some copper for it. Towards the end of September came Kendrick on the belatedColumbia. Both Americans were surprised to learn that half a dozen navigators had already gone as far north as Nootka Sound. Perez, Heceta, Quadra—all had coasted Vancouver Island for Spain from 1774 to 1779, and so had La Pérouse, the French explorer, in 1787. Hanna had come out from China for furs in 1785. In 1787 Portlock and Dixon had secured almost two thousand sea-otter skins as far north as the Queen Charlotte Islands. These were things Meares did not tell the Americans. It would have been to acknowledge that an abundance of furs was there to draw so many trading-ships. But during the winter at Nootka the men from Boston learned these facts from the Indians.
The launch of the North-West America at Nootka Sound, 1788. From Meares's Voyages.The launch of theNorth-West Americaat Nootka Sound, 1788.From Meares'sVoyages.
The launch of the North-West America at Nootka Sound, 1788. From Meares's Voyages.The launch of theNorth-West Americaat Nootka Sound, 1788.From Meares'sVoyages.
The winter was passed in trading with the Indians, and spring saw Gray far up the Strait of Juan de Fuca. By May 1 the ships were loaded with furs and were about to sail.Meanwhile, what had the Spanish viceroy been doing? Strange that the Spaniards should look on complaisantly while English traders from China—Meares and Hanna and Barkley and Douglas—were taking possession of Nootka. The answer came unexpectedly. Just as the 'Bostonnais' were sailing out for a last run up the coast, there glided into Nootka Sound a proud ship—all sails set, twenty cannon pointed, Spanish colours spread to the breeze. The captain of this vessel, Don Joseph Martinez, took a look at the English fortifications and another at the Americans. The Americans were enemies of England. Therefore the pompous don treated them royally, presented them with spices and wines, and allowed them to depart unmolested. When the Americans returned from the run up coast, they found the English fort dismantled, a Spanish fort erected on Hog Island at the entrance of the sound, and Douglas's ship—the companion of Meares's vessel—held captive by the Spaniard. Gray and Kendrick now exchanged ships, and sailed for China to dispose of their cargoes of furs and receive in exchange cargoes of tea for Boston. The whole city of Boston welcomed theColumbiahome in the autumn of 1790. Fifty thousandmiles she had ploughed through the seas in three years.
In June 1791 Gray was out again on theColumbia. This time he went as far north as the Portland Canal, past the Queen Charlotte Islands, where he met Kendrick on theLady Washington. The quarrel at Nootka between the English and the Spaniards was still going on; so this autumn the two 'Bostonnais' anchored for the winter in Clayoquot Sound—a place later to be made famous by tragedy—south of Nootka. Here they built a stockaded fur-post for themselves, which they named Fort Defence. During the winter they built and launched a little coasting schooner, theAdventure.
Up at Nootka the Spaniard Gonzales de Haro had replaced Martinez; and his countrymen Quimper and Elisa were daily exploring on the east side of Vancouver Island, where to this day Spanish names tell of their charting. Some of the names, however, were afterwards changed. What is to-day known as Esquimalt, Quimper called Valdes, and Victoria he named Cordoba. Amid much firing of muskets and drinking of wine Quimper took solemn possession of all this territory for Spain. Then, early in Augustof 1791, he sailed away for Monterey, while Elisa remained at Nootka.
Gray knew that three English vessels which had come from China for furs—Colnett'sArgonaut, Douglas'sIphigenia, and thePrincess Royal—had been seized by the Spanish at Nootka. Though the fact had not been trumpeted to the world, the Spanish said that their pilots had explored these coasts as early as 1775—at least three years before Cook's landing at Nootka; so that if first exploration counted for possession, Spain had first claim. Whether the Spaniards instigated the raid that now threatened the rival American fort at Clayoquot, the two 'Bostonnais' never knew. TheColumbiahad been beached and dismantled. Loop-holes punctured the palisades of the fort, and cannon were above the gates. Sentinels kept constant guard; but what was Gray's horror to learn in February 1792 that Indians to the number of two thousand were in ambush round the fort and had bribed a Hawaiian boy to wet the priming of the 'Bostonnais' guns. The fort could not be defended against such a number of enemies, for there were not twenty men within the walls. Gray hastily got theColumbiaready for sea. Having stowed in the holdenough provisions to carry them home if flight should become necessary, the sailors worked in the dark to their necks in water scraping the hull free of barnacles, and when the high tide came in, she was floated out with all on board. On the morning of the 20th the woods were seen to be alive with Indians. The Indians had not counted on their prey escaping by sea, and an old chief came suavely aboard offering Gray sea-otter skins if the 'Bostonnais' would go ashore to trade. Gray slapped the old rascal across the face; the Indian was over the side at a plunge, and the marauders were seen no more.
In spite of the difficulties and dangers it presented, Gray determined to make another effort to find the river which old Bruno Heceta had sighted in 1775. And early in April, after sending his mate north on the little vesselAdventureto trade, Gray sailed away south on theColumbia. Let us leave him for the present stealing furtively along the coast from Cape Flattery to Cape Disappointment.
It was the spring of 1792. The Spaniard Elisa of Nootka had for a year kept his pilot Narvaez, in a crazy little schooner crowdedwith thirty sailors, charting north-east past the harbour of Victoria, through Haro Strait, following very much the same channel that steamers follow to-day as they ply between Victoria and Vancouver. East of a high island, where holiday folk now have their summer camps, Pilot Narvaez came on the estuary of a great river, which he called Boca de Florida Blanca. This could not be Bruno Heceta's river, for this was farther north and inland. It was a new river, with wonderful purple water—the purple of river silt blending with ocean blue. The banks were wooded to the very water's edge with huge-girthed and mossed trees, such as we to-day see in Stanley Park, Vancouver. The river swept down behind a deep harbour, with forested heights between river-mouth and roadstead, as if nature had purposely interposed to guard this harbour against the deposit of silt borne down by the mighty stream. To-day a boulevard rises from the land-locked harbour and goes over the heights to the river-mouth like the arc of a bow; the finest residences of the Canadian Pacific coast stand there; and the river is lined with mile upon mile of lumber-yards and saw-mills. Where the rock projects like a hand into the turbid waters standsa crowded city, built like New York on what is almost an island. Where the opposite shores slope down in a natural park are rising the buildings of a great university. The ragged starveling crew of Pilot Narvaez had found what are now known as Burrard Inlet, Vancouver City, Point Grey, Shaughnessy Heights, and the Fraser River. The crew were presently all ill of scurvy, possibly because of the unsanitary crowding, and the schooner, almost falling to pieces, came crawling back to Nootka. The poor Mexicans were utterly unaware that they had discovered a gateway for northern empire. Narvaez himself lay almost unconscious in his berth. Elisa sent them all home to Mexico on furlough; and, on hearing their report, the viceroy of Mexico ordered out two ships, theSutiland theMexicana, Don Galiano and Don Valdes in command, to follow up the charting of the coast northward from Vancouver Island to the Russian settlements.
Small ringing of bells, no blaring of trumpets at all, prayers a-plenty, but little ammunition and less food, accompanied the deep-sea voyagings of these poor Spanish pilots. When Bering set out, he had the power of the whole Russian empire behind him. When Cook setout, he had the power of the whole British Navy behind him. But when the poor Mexican peons set out, they had nothing behind them but the branding iron, or slavery in the mines, if they failed. Yet they sang as they sailed their rickety death-traps, and they laughed as they rowed; and when the tide-rip caught them, they sank without a cry to any but the Virgin. Look at a map of the west coast of the Pacific from the Horn to Sitka. First were the Spaniards at every harbour gate; and yet to-day, of all their deep-sea findings on that coast, not a rod, not a foot, does Spain own. It was, of course, Spain's insane policy of keeping the Pacific 'a closed sea' that concealed the achievements of the Mexican pilots and buried them in oblivion. But if actual accomplishments count, these pilots with their ragged peon crews, half-bloods of Aztec woman and Spanish adventurer, deserve higher rank in the roll of Pacific coast exploration than history has yet accorded them.
England, it may be believed, did not calmly submit to seeing the ships and forts of her traders seized at Nootka. It was not that England cared for the value of three vessels engaged in foreign trade. Still less did shecare for the log-huts dignified by the name of a fort. But she was mistress of the seas, and had been since the destruction of the Armada. And as mistress of the seas, she could not tolerate as much as the seizure of a fishing-smack. For some time there were mutterings of war, but at length diplomacy prevailed. England demanded, among other things, the restoration of the buildings and the land, and full reparation for all losses. Spain decided to submit, and accordingly the Nootka Convention was signed by the two powers in October 1790. Two ships, theDiscoveryand theChatham, were then fitted out by the British Admiralty for an expedition to the Pacific to receive formal surrender of the property from Spain, and also to chart the whole coast of the Pacific from Drake's New Albion to the Russian possessions at Sitka. This expedition was commanded by Captain George Vancouver, who had been on the Pacific with Cook. It was April 1792 when Vancouver came up abreast of Cape Disappointment. Was it chance, or fate, that a gale drove him off-shore just two weeks before a rival explorer entered the mouth of the great unknown river that lay on his vessel's starboard bow? But for this mishap Vancouver might have discoveredthe Columbia, and England might have made good her claim to the territory which is now Oregon and Washington and Idaho. Vancouver's ships were gliding into the Strait of Juan de Fuca when they met a square-hulled, trim little trader under the flag of the United States. It was theColumbia, commanded by Robert Gray. The American told an astounding story. He had found Bruno Heceta's River of the West. Vancouver refused to credit the news; yet there was the ship's log; there were the details—landmarks, soundings, anchorages for twenty miles up the Columbia from its mouth. Gray had, indeed, been up the river, and had crossed the bar and come out on the Pacific again.
Vancouver now headed his ships inland and proceeded to explore Puget Sound. Never before had white men's boats cruised the waters of that spider-shaped sea. Every inlet of the tortuous coasts was penetrated and surveyed, to make certain that no passage to the north-east lay through these waters. In June the explorers passed up the Strait of Georgia. A thick fog hid from them what would have proved an important discovery—the mouth of the Fraser river. Some distance north of Burrard Inlet the explorers met the twoSpanish ships which the viceroy of Mexico had sent out, theSutiland theMexicana, commanded respectively by Don Galiano and Don Valdes. From them Vancouver learned that Don Quadra, the Spanish representative, was awaiting him at Nootka, prepared to restore the forts and property as agreed in the Nootka Convention. The vessels continued their journey northward and entered Queen Charlotte Sound in August. Then, steering into the open sea, Vancouver sailed for Nootka to meet Spain's official messenger. He had circumnavigated Vancouver Island.
Callicum and Maquinna, Chiefs of Nootka Sound. From Meares's Voyages.Callicum and Maquinna, Chiefs of Nootka Sound.From Meares'sVoyages.
Callicum and Maquinna, Chiefs of Nootka Sound. From Meares's Voyages.Callicum and Maquinna, Chiefs of Nootka Sound.From Meares'sVoyages.
The Nootka controversy had almost caused a European war. Now it ended in what has a resemblance to a comic opera. Vancouver found the Spaniards occupying a fort on an island at the mouth of the harbour. On the main shore stood the Indian village of Chief Maquinna. A Spanish pilot guided the English ship to mooring. The Spanish frigates fairly bristled with cannon. An English officer dressed in regimentals marched to the Spanish fort and presented Captain Vancouver's compliments to Don Quadra. Spanish cannon thundered a welcome that shook the hills, and English guns made answer. A curious fashion, to waste good powderwithout taking aim at each other, thought Chief Maquinna. Don Quadra breakfasted Captain Vancouver. Captain Vancouver wined and dined Don Quadra; and Maquinna, lord of the wilds, attended the feast dressed Indian fashion. But when the Spanish don and the English officer took breath from flow of compliments and wine, they did not seem to arrive anywhere in their negotiations. Vancouver held that Spain must relinquish the site of Meares's fort and the territory surrounding it and Port Cox. Don Quadra held that he had been instructed to relinquish only the land on which the fort stood—according to Vancouver, 'but little more than one hundred yards in extent any way.' No understanding could be arrived at, and Quadra at the end of September took his departure for Monterey, leaving Vancouver to follow a few days later.
Vancouver was anxious to be off on further exploration. He was eager to verify the existence of the river which Gray had reported. He spent most of October exploring this river. Explorers in that day, as in this, were not fair judges of each other's feats. Vancouver took possession of the Columbia river region for England, setting down in his narrative that'no other civilized nation or state had ever entered this river before ... it does not appear that Mr Gray either saw or was ever within five leagues of the entrance.'
Vancouver then visited the presidio at San Francisco, and thence proceeded to Monterey, where Quadra awaited him. His lieutenant, Broughton, who had been in charge of the boats that explored the Columbia, here left him and accompanied Quadra to San Blas, whence he went overland to the Atlantic and sailed for England, bearing dispatches to the government. Vancouver spent yet another year on the North Pacific, corroborating his first year's charting and proving that no north-east passage through the continent existed. Portland Canal, Jervis Inlet, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, Lynn Canal—all were traced to head-waters by Vancouver.
George Vancouver. From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London.George Vancouver.From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
George Vancouver. From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London.George Vancouver.From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
The curtain then drops on the exploration of the North Pacific, with Spain jealously holding all south of the Columbia, Russia jealously holding all north of Sitka, and England and the United States advancing counter-claims for all the territory between.
The movement of the fur traders towards the Pacific now became a fevered race for the wealth of a new El Dorado. Astor's traders in New York, the Scottish and English merchants of the North-West Company in Montreal, the Spanish traders of the South-West, even the directors of the sleepy old Hudson's Bay Company—all turned longing eyes to that Pacific north-west coast whence came sea-otter skins in trade, each for a few pennies' worth of beads, powder, or old iron. Rumours, too, were rife of the great wealth of the seal rookeries, and the seal proved as powerful a magnet to draw the fur traders as the little beaver, the pursuit of which had led them into frozen wilds.
Up in the Athabaska country, eating his heart out with chagrin because his associates in the North-West Company of Montreal hadignored his voyage of discovery down the Mackenzie river to the Arctic in 1789,[1] the young trader Alexander Mackenzie heard these rumours of new wealth in furs on the Pacific. Who would be the first overland to that western sea? If Spaniard and Russian had tapped the source of wealth from the ocean side, why could not the Nor'westers cross the mountains and secure the furs from the land side? Mackenzie had heard, too, of the fabled great River of the West. Could he but catch the swish of its upper current, what would hinder him floating down it to the sea? Mackenzie thought and thought, and paced his quarters up at Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabaska, till his mind became so filled with the idea of an overland journey to the Pacific that he could not sleep or rest. He had felt himself handicapped by lack of knowledge of astronomy and surveying when on the voyage to the Arctic, so he asked leave of absence from his company, came down by canoe to Montreal, and sailed for England to spend the winter studying in London. Here, everything was in a ferment over the voyages of Cook and Hanna and Meares, over theseizure of British trading-ships by the viceroy of Mexico, over the Admiralty's plans to send Vancouver out to complete Cook's explorations. The rumours were as fuel to the flame that burned in Mackenzie. The spring of 1792 saw him hurrying back to Fort Chipewyan to prepare for the expedition on which he had set his heart. When October came he launched his canoes, fully manned and provisioned, on Lake Athabaska, and, ascending the Peace river to a point about six miles above the forks formed by its junction with the Smoky, he built a rude palisaded fur-post and spent the winter there.
Spring came and found Mackenzie ready to go forward into the unknown regions of the west, regions as yet untrodden by the feet of white men. Alexander Mackay, one of the most resolute and capable traders in the service of the North-West Company, was to be his companion on the journey; and with them were to go six picked French-Canadian voyageurs and two Indians as guides. They had built a birch-bark canoe of exceptional strength and lightness. It was twenty-five feet long, some four feet in beam, twenty-six inches deep, and had a carrying capacity of three thousand pounds. Explorers andmen stepped into their light craft on the evening of May 9, 1793. The fort fired guns and waved farewell; the paddlers struck up a voyageurs' song; and the blades dipped in rhythmic time. Mackenzie waved his hat back to the group in front of the fort gate; and then with set face headed his canoe westward for the Pacific.
Recall what was happening now out on the Pacific! Robert Gray was heading home to Boston with news of the discovery of the great river. Vancouver was back from San Francisco carefully charting the inner channel of the coast. Baranoff, the little czar of the Russian traders, was coasting at the head of fifteen hundred 'bidarkies' between the Aleutians and Sitka; and Spain was still sending out ragged pilots to chart the seas which she had not the marine to hold.
The big canoe went on, up the Peace river. Spring thaw brought the waters down from the mountains in turbulent floods, and the precipices narrowed on each side till the current became a foaming cascade. It was one thing to float down-stream with brigades of singing voyageurs and cargoes of furs in spring; it was a different matter to breast the full force of these torrents with only ten mento paddle. In the big brigades the men paddled in relays. In this canoe each man was expected to pole and paddle continuously and fiercely against a current that was like a mill-race. Mackenzie listened to the grumblers over the night camp-fire, and explained how much safer it was to ascend an unknown stream with bad rapids than to run down it. The danger could always be seen before running into it. He cheered the drooping spirits of his band, and inspired them with some of his own indomitable courage.
By May 16 the river had narrowed to a foaming cataract; and the banks were such sheer rock-wall that it was almost impossible to land. They had arrived at the Rocky Mountain Portage, as it was afterwards called. It was clear that the current could not be stemmed by pole or paddle; the canoe must be towed or carried. When Mackenzie tried to get foothold or handhold on the shore, huge boulders and land-slides of loose earth slithered down, threatening to smash canoe and canoemen. Mackenzie got out a tow-line eighty feet long. This he tied to the port thwart of the canoe. With the tow-line round his shoulders, while the torrent roaredpast and filled the canyon with the 'voice of many waters,' Mackenzie leaped to the dangerous slope, cut foothold and handhold on the face of the cliff with an axe, and scrambled up to a table of level rock. Then he shouted and signalled for his men to come up. If the voyageurs had not been hemmed in by a boiling maelstrom on both sides, they would have deserted on the spot. Mackenzie saw them begin to strip as if to swim; then, clothes on back and barefoot, they scrambled up the treacherous shore. He reached over, and assisted them to the level ground above. The tow-line was drawn taut round trees and the canoe tracked up the raging current. But the rapids became wilder. A great wave struck the bow of the canoe and the tow-line snapped in mid-air. The terrified men looking over the edge of the precipice saw their craft sidle as if to swamp; but, on the instant, another mighty wave flung her ashore, and they were able to haul her out of danger.
Mackay went ahead to see how far the rapids extended. He found that they were at least nine miles in length. On his return the men were declaring that they would not ascend such waters another rod. Mackenzie, to humour them, left them to a regale of rumand pemmican, and axe in hand went up the precipitous slope, and began to make a rough path through the forest. Up the rude incline the men hauled the empty canoe, cutting their way as they advanced. Then they carried up the provisions in ninety-pound bundles. By nightfall of the first day they had advanced but one mile. Next morning the journey was continued; the progress was exactly three miles the second day, and the men fell in their tracks with exhaustion, and slept that night where they lay. But at length they had passed the rapids; the toilsome portage was over, and the canoe was again launched on the stream. The air was icy from the snows of the mountain-peaks, and in spite of their severe exercise the men had to wear heavy clothing.
On May 31 they arrived at the confluence where the rivers now known as the Finlay and the Parsnip, flowing together, form the Peace. The Indians of this region told Mackenzie of a great river beyond the big mountains, a river that flowed towards the noonday sun; and of 'Carrier Indians'[2] inland, who acted asmiddlemen and traders between the coast and the mountain tribes. They said that the Carriers told legends of 'white men on the coast, who wore armour from head to heel'—undoubtedly the Spanish dons—and of 'huge canoes with sails like clouds' that plied up and down 'the stinking waters'—meaning the sea.
Mackenzie was uncertain which of the two confluents to follow—whether to ascend the Finlay, flowing from the north-west, or the Parsnip, flowing from the south-east. He consulted his Indian guides, one of whom advised him to take the southern branch. This would lead, the guide said, to a lake from which they could portage to another stream, and so reach the great river leading to the sea. Mackenzie decided to follow this advice, and ordered his men to proceed up the Parsnip. Their hearts sank. They had toiled up one terrible river; directly before them was another, equally precipitous and dangerous. Nevertheless, they began the ascent. For a week the rush of avalanches from the mountain-peaks could be heard like artillery fire. Far up above the cloud-line they could see the snow tumbling over an upper precipice in powdery wind-blown cataracts; a minute later would come the thunderousrumble of the falling masses. With heroic fortitude the voyageurs held their way against the fierce current, sometimes paddling, sometimes towing the canoe along the river-bank. Once, however, when Mackenzie and Mackay had gone ahead on foot to reconnoitre, ordering the canoemen to paddle along behind, the canoe failed to follow. Mackay went back and found the voyageurs disputing ashore. They pretended that a leak had delayed them. From Indians met by the way, Mackenzie learned that he was indeed approaching a portage over the height-of-land to the waters that flowed towards the Pacific. One of these Indians was induced to go with Mackenzie as guide. They tramped ahead through a thicket of brush, and came suddenly out on a blue tarn. This was the source of the Parsnip, the southern branch of the Peace. The whole party arrived on June 12. A portage of 817 paces over a rocky ridge brought them to a second mountain lake drained by a river that flowed towards the west. Mackenzie had crossed the watershed, the Great Divide, and had reached the waters which empty into the Pacific.
The river which the explorers now entered was a small tributary of the Fraser. Someyears later it was named by Simon Fraser the Bad River, and it deserved the name. Mackenzie launched his canoe down-stream. The men's spirits rose. This was working with the current, not against it; but the danger of going with an unknown current became at once apparent. The banks began to skim past, the waters to rise in oily corrugations; and before the voyageurs realized it, they were caught by a current they could not stem and were hurried sidling down-stream. The men sprang out to swim, but the current prevented them from reaching land, and they clung in terror to the sides of the canoe till an eddy sent them on a sand-bar in the midst of the rapids. With great difficulty the craft was rescued and brought ashore. The stern had been torn out of the canoe, half the powder and bullets lost, and the entire cargo drenched.
The men were panic-stricken and on the verge of mutiny; but Mackenzie was undaunted and determined to go forward. He spread the provisions out to dry and set his crew to work patching up the stern of the broken canoe with resin and oilcloth and new cedar lining. That night the mountain Indian who had acted as guide across the portage gave Mackenzie the slip and escaped in thewoods. For several days after this most of the party trudged on foot carrying the cargo, while four of the most experienced canoemen brought the empty canoe down the rapids. But on June 17 they found further progress by water impossible owing to masses of driftwood in the stream. They were now, however, less than a mile from the south fork of the Fraser; the men carried the canoe on their shoulders across the intervening neck of swamp, and at last the explorers 'enjoyed the inexpressible satisfaction' of finding themselves on the banks of a broad, navigable river, on the west side of the Great Divide.
The point where they embarked, on the morning of June 18, was about thirty-five miles above the Nechaco, or north fork of the Fraser, just at the upper end of the great bend where the south fork, flowing to the north-west, sweeps round in a semicircle, joins its confluent, and pours southward to the sea. This trend of the river to the south was not what Mackenzie expected. He wanted to follow a stream leading west. Without noticing it, he had passed the north fork, the Nechaco, and was sweeping down the main stream of the Fraser, where towering mountains cut off the view ahead, and the powerfulrush of the waters foreboded hard going, if not more rapids and cataracts. Mackenzie must have a new guide. The Carrier Indians dwelt along this river, but they appeared to be truculently hostile. On June 21 a party of these Indians stood on one of the banks and shot arrows at the explorers and rolled stones from the precipices. Mackenzie landed on the opposite bank, after sending a hunter by a wide detour through the woods behind the Indians on the other shore, with orders to shoot instantly if the savages threatened either the canoe or himself. In full sight of the Indians Mackenzie threw trinkets in profusion on the ground, laid down his musket and pistol, and held up his arms in token of friendship. The savages understood the meaning of his actions. Two of them jumped into a dug-out and came poling across to him. Suspiciously and very timidly they landed. Mackenzie threw himself on the ground, and on the sands traced his path through the 'shining mountains.' By Indian sign-language he told them he wanted to go to the sea; and, disarmed of all suspicion, the Indians were presently on the ground beside him, drawing the trail to the sea. Terrible rapids (they imitated the noise of the cataracts) barred his way by this river.He must turn back to where another river (the Blackwater) came in on the west, and ascend that stream to a portage which would lead over to the sea.
The post of Alexandria on the Cariboo Road marks Mackenzie's farthest south on the Fraser. At this point, after learning all he could of the route from the Indians, he turned the prow of his canoe up the river. The Carrier Indians provided him with a guide. On July 4, nearly two months from the time of leaving the fort on the Peace river, the portage on the Blackwater was reached; the canoe was abandoned, some provisions were cached, and each man set off afoot with a ninety-pound pack on his back. Heavy mist lay on the thick forest. The Indian trail was but a dimly defined track over forest mould. The dripping underbrush that skirted the path soaked the men to the skin. The guide had shown an inclination to desert, and Mackenzie slept beside him, ready to seize and hold him on the slightest movement. Totem cedar-poles in front of the Indian villages told the explorers that they were approaching the home of the coastal tribes. The men's clothing was by this time torn to shreds. They were barefooted, bareheaded,almost naked. For nearly two weeks they journeyed on foot; then, having forded the Dean river, they embarked for the sea on the Bella Coola in cedar dug-outs which they procured from Indians of one of the coastal tribes. Daily now Mackenzie saw signs of white traders. The Indians possessed beads and trinkets. One Indian had a Spanish or Russian lance. Fishing weirs were passed. There was a whiff of salt water in the air; then far out between the hills lay a gap of illimitable blue. At eight o'clock in the morning of Saturday, July 20, 1793, Mackenzie reached the mouth of the river and found himself on the sea. The next day he went down North Bentinck Arm, and, passing the entrance to the south arm, landed at the cape on the opposite shore. He then proceeded down Burke Channel. It was near the mouth of this inlet that he inscribed, in red letters on a large rock, the memorable words: 'Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. Lat. 52° 20' 48" N.'
Barely two months previously Vancouver had explored and named these very waters and headlands. A hostile old Indian explained bellicosely that the white sailors had firedupon him. For this outrage he demanded satisfaction in gifts from Mackenzie. Few gifts had Mackenzie for the aggressive old chief. There were exactly twenty pounds of pemmican—two pounds a man for a three months' trip back. There remained also fifteen pounds of rice—the mainstay of the voyageurs—and six pounds of mouldy flour. The Indians proved so vociferously hostile that two voyageurs had to stand guard while the others slept on the bare rocks. On one occasion savages in dug-outs began hurling spears. But no harm resulted from these unfriendly demonstrations, and the party of explorers presently set out on their homeward journey.
Mackenzie had accomplished his object. In the race to the Pacific overland he was the first of the explorers of North America to cross the continent and reach the ocean. Late in August the voyageurs were back at the little fort on the Peace river. Mackenzie shortly afterwards quitted the fur country and retired to Scotland, where he wrote the story of his explorations. His book appeared in 1801, and in the following year he was knighted by the king for his great achievements.