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The English Navigator sent Two Hundred Years later to find the New Albion of Drake's Discoveries He misses both the Straits of Fuca and the Mouth of the Columbia, but anchors at Nootka, the Rendezvous of Future Traders No Northeast Passage found through Alaska The True Cause of Cook's Murder in Hawaii told by Ledyard Russia becomes Jealous of his Explorations
Not a shoal exists within the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these."
But as we got out into the Straits of Fuca, the next day, a little barque, the "Crimea," came up, and said she had been a week trying to get out of the straits, and thought the steady south-west wind, which had prevented her, could not blow much longer. We continued beating down towards the ocean, and in the afternoon a dense fog shut us in.
In about little more than three weeks they entered Fuca Straits, up which they ran for about sixty miles, with magnificent scenery on both sides, though desolate in the extreme, till they reached Esquimault Harbour, in Vancouver's Island; about three miles from which stands Victoria, the capital.
Let us picture in our minds the changes in the geography of the Pacific coast of the United States which must have been made by a sinking of the land to a depth of only six hundred feet. We will begin upon the north, at the Strait of Fuca. Puget Sound once opened to the south as well as to the north, so that the Olympic Mountains formed an island.
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.
Juan de Fuca, a Greek pilot, employed, as alleged, by Spanish explorers between 1587 and 1592, was reported to have told of a passage from the Pacific to the Arctic through a mountainous forested land up in the region of what is now British Columbia.
On the whole the character of this coast seems to be well expressed by Lieutenant Wilkes, when he says "Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters, and their safety; not a shoal exists within the straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget's Sound, or Hood's Canal that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74 gun ship.
This light-house is at the end of a long, narrow sand-spit, known by the unpoetical name of Ediz Hook, which runs out for three miles into the Straits of Fuca, in a graceful curve, forming the bay of Port Angeles. Outside are the roaring surf and heavy swell of the sea; inside that slender arm, a safe shelter. In a desolate little house near by, lives Mrs.
So far as history reads, neither white man nor red has ever ventured fairly within these limits; a mountainous waste which rises from the level country, within ten or fifteen miles of the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the west, Hood's Canal in the east, and the barren sand-hills lying to the far south.
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