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Updated: June 4, 2025
He was eighty or more years of age. He had heard the traditions of Juan de Fuca, the Greek pilot, who left his name on the straits of the Puget Sea. He had heard of the coming of Vancouver in his boyhood, the English explorer who named the seas and mountains for his lieutenants and friends, Puget, Baker, Ranier, and Townsend.
He had wished to be the first to explore the Straits of Fuca, and on only April 27, had passed an opening which he pronounced inaccessible and not a river, certainly not a river worthy of his attention.
But for this mishap Vancouver might have discovered the 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 the Columbia, commanded by Robert Gray.
Once in a while, a loon comes sailing along, in its slow, stately way, turning its slender, graceful neck from side to side, as if enjoying the scenery. We never see more than two of them together, and they generally separate soon. Puget Sound and Adjacent Waters. Its Early Explorers. Towns, Harbors, and Channels. Vancouver's Nomenclature. Juan de Fuca. Mount Baker. Chinese "Wing."
He had hoped to be the first to round the Straits of Fuca, disproving the assumption 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 practically that this part of the coast was a large island, and the Straits of Fuca an arm of the Pacific Ocean.
April saw him fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca, which Cook had said did not exist. Then he headed north again, touching at Nootka, where he found Douglas, the Englishman, had come back from the Sandwich Islands with the two ships. Passing out of Nootka at four in the afternoon of May 1, he met a stately ship, all sails set, twenty guns pointed, under Spanish colors, gliding into the harbor.
Between the magnificent harbour of Halifax, on the Atlantic, open throughout the year for ships of the largest class, to the Straits of Fuca, opposite Vancouver's Island, with its noble Esquimault inlet, intervene some 3,200 miles of road line.
On the right we have a long massive chain of lofty mountains covered with snow, called the Olympian range very grand, quite Alpine in aspect. This is the peninsula, composed of a series of mountains running for many miles in one unbroken line, which divides the Straits of Fuca from Puget Sound.
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 Passage was to be found by way of the Straits of Fuca.
It was at first thought that this was the desired waterway, but various navigators, among them Vancouver, explored the body of water into which the Strait of Fuca opened, only to find that every branch and inlet terminated in the land. Puget Sound is nearly enclosed by water and is so large as really to form an inland sea.
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