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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.
The company fought Wyeth's trade and bought him out; but when the turbulent Indians crowded round the 'White Eagle, chief of Fort Vancouver, asking, 'Shall we kill shall we kill the "Bostonnais"? M'Loughlin struck the chief plotter down, drove the others from the fort, and had it noised about among the tribes that if any one struck the white 'Bostonnais, M'Loughlin would strike him.
She was returning there, she told Hollister, after three weeks or so in Vancouver. The steamer would dock about daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered to see her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without any reservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observe that she even seemed a trifle pleased.
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 Canal. There must be no myth of a Northeast Passage left lurking in any of the many inlets of this spider-shaped sea. Vancouver, Menzies, Puget, and Johnstone set out in the small boats to penetrate every trace of water passage.
Jack MacRae spent three weeks in Vancouver as a one-man commission, self-appointed, to inquire into the fresh-salmon trade. He talked to men who caught salmon and to men who sold them, both wholesale and retail.
"I've seen too many of 'em to be mistaken." His words crystallized Jim's suspicions into certainty. The whole thing was plain now. He remembered a recent magazine article on the breaking of the immigration laws. Chinamen would cross the Pacific to Vancouver, paying the Dominion head-tax, and thus gaining admission into Canada.
Wyndham began again, presently, "why did you refuse Vancouver? You do not mind telling me, do you?" "Why do you ask?" said Sybil. "It makes no difference now." "No, perhaps not. Only I always thought it strange. He must have done something you did not like, of course." "Yes, that was it. He did something I did not like. Mr. Harrington would have said he had a perfect right to do as he pleased.
Still there were other sources of information. A man like Carr could not make his home in a place no larger than Vancouver and drop out of sight without a ripple. Thompson stuck doggedly to the telephone, sought out numbers and called them up. In the course of an hour he was in possession of several facts. Sam Carr was up the coast, operating a timber and land undertaking for returned soldiers.
He proved the insularity of the South Land, and examined the long-neglected east coast. In. 1777, Mons. de St. Alouarn anchored near Cape Leeuwin, but no details of his visit have been preserved. In 1791, Captain George Vancouver touched on the south coast, and gave the name of King George's Sound to that well-known harbour; thence he sailed eastward.
The transports trusted with the mails were slow, and communications through the old lines between Hongkong and San Francisco, Yokohama and Vancouver, were not reliably organized. There were painful cases of masses of mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of Europe.
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