Never again will this land see more hardy sailors than the American tars that travelled the seas at the close of our Revolution. Our little Yankee brigs were creeping down and down the coast and around the Horn, until every village had its skippers in the far Pacific. Some went for furs and some for whales, and all for bold adventure.
In July, 1806, the Lydia, having just rescued two American sailors from the savages at Vancouver Island, came into the Columbia River for a load of spars, the beginning of a mighty commerce. Here they heard of Lewis and Clark, and ten miles up, faithful old Chief Coboway gave Captain Hill the muster roll left at Fort Clatsop. This, sent by way of China, reached the United States in 1807, to find the great explorers safe at home.
With the death of Baranof in 1819 ended the vast plan of Russia to make the northern half of the Pacific its own. Baranof was small and wrinkled and bald, but his eye had life. He would have made a czar like Peter the Great. To him and him alone was due the Russia of America, that for seven million dollars was sold to us in 1870, an empire in itself.
XXII
BACK TO CIVILISATION
The canoes were loaded, and at one o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday, the 23d day of March, 1806, Lewis and Clark took final leave of Fort Clatsop.
Back past Cathlamet they came, where Queen Sally still watched by her totem posts; past Oak Point on Fanny's Island, named by Clark, where two Springs later a Boston ship made the first white settlement in Oregon. Slowly the little flotilla paddled up, past Coffin Rock, immemorial deposit of Indian dead, past snowy St. Helens, a landmark at sea for the ship that would enter the harbour.
Flowers were everywhere, the hillsides aglow with red flowering currants that made March as gay as the roses of June. The grass was high, and the robins were singing.
At sunset, March 30, they camped on a beautiful prairie, the future site of historic Vancouver. Before them the Columbia was a shimmer of silver. Behind, rose the dim, dark Oregon forest. The sharp cry of the sea-gull rang over the waters, and the dusky pelican and the splendid brown albatross were sailing back to the sea.
Herds of elk and deer roamed on the uplands and in woody green islands below, where flocks of ducks, geese, and swans were digging up the lily-like wapato with their bills.
With laboured breath, still bending to the oar, on the first of April they encountered a throng of Indians crowding down from above, gaunt, hollow-eyed, almost starved, greedily tarrying to pick up the bones and refuse meat thrown from the camp of the whites.