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Updated: June 4, 2025
We commenced our recent trip at Victoria, and crossed the Straits of Fuca, through which the west wind draws as through a tunnel, to Port Angeles. This place was named by Don Francisco Elisa, who was sent out to this region in 1791 by the Mexican Viceroy. Of course Don Francisco must compliment the Viceroy by giving his name to some important points.
Puget Sound, so justly famous the world over for the surpassing size and excellence and abundance of its timber, is a long, many-fingered arm of the sea reaching southward from the head of the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the heart of the grand forests of the western portion of Washington, between the Cascade Range and the mountains of the coast.
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 was no northeast passage through the west coast of America. The legend of Juan de Fuca became current about 1592, as issued in Samuel Purchas' Pilgrims in 1625, Vol.
He also adds, "No part of the world affords finer inland sounds, or a greater number of harbours, than are found within the Straits of Juan de Fuca, capable of receiving the highest class of vessels, and without a danger in them which is not viable. The country also affords as many sites for maritime power as any other."
The original forest-line is hardly broken; the deer still come down to the water's edge; and the face of the country has apparently not changed since Vancouver, nearly a hundred years ago, stooped to gather the May roses at Dungeness; or Juan de Fuca, two centuries earlier, "sailed into that silent sea," and looked round at the mountains, not less beautiful, though more imposing, than those that lay about his own home on the distant Mediterranean.
Rounding northward, Gray met the companion ship of the Spanish commander. It will be remembered Cook missed proving that the west coast was a chain of islands. Since Cook's time, Barclay, an Englishman, and Meares had been in the Straits of Fuca.
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 latitude 39 to the Straits of Fuca, which Vancouver named Gulf of Georgia.
The harbour, next to that of San Francisco, is the best on the Pacific coast of North America, between the Straits of Fuca and Acapulco.
It is estimated by the Superintendent of the Coast Survey in the accompanying report that the extent of the seacoast of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico is upward of 400 miles; of the coast of Upper California on the Pacific, of 970 miles, and of Oregon, including the Straits of Fuca, of 650 miles, making the whole extent of seacoast on the Pacific 1,620 miles and the whole extent on both the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico 2,020 miles.
When autumn came and the Siwash fishermen prepared to return to Puget Sound, she embarked with a couple of families in a big cedar canoe; and with them she threaded the hazardous chaos of the Alaskan and Canadian coasts, till the Straits of Juan de Fuca were passed and she led her boy by the hand up the hard pave of Seattle.
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