The sinking of the land flooded the lower Columbia River and the mouth of the Willamette, so that ocean ships may now go up as far as Portland. The currents and waves soon threw up bars across the mouths of the smaller streams, and formed lagoons behind them. Ships frequently have difficulty in entering many of the harbors because of the sand bars which have been built up part way to the surface of the water.
It is thought that along some portions of the coast there has recently been a slight upward movement of the land. Figure 37 shows a bit of California coast, near San Juan, where the Santa Fé railroad has laid its tracks for several miles along a strip of abandoned beach, at the base of a cliff against which the waves once beat.
FIG. 38.—LIMESTONE CLIFF, QUATSINO SOUND, VANCOUVER ISLAND
At the northern end of Vancouver island there is a deep arm of the ocean called Quatsino Sound. A limestone cliff upon the shore of this sound (Fig. 38) has been undermined by the dissolving of the limestone, but now the water lacks three feet of rising to the notch which it recently formed.
[THE DISCOVERY OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER]
The influence exerted by the various features of the land and water upon the settlement of a new region are not always fully appreciated. If the entrance to San Francisco Bay had been broader and more easily discerned by the early navigators who sailed past it, and if the mouth of the Columbia River had not been obscured by lowlands and a line of breakers upon the bar, the history of western America would probably have been very different.
In the seventeenth century the prospect seemed to be that Spain would control the Pacific Ocean. She claimed, by right of discovery, all the lands bordering upon this ocean and the exclusive right to navigate its waters. Every vessel found there without license from the court of Spain was, by royal decree, to be confiscated.
It is interesting, after all these years and with our present knowledge, to look back and see how unreasonable were the claims of Spain. In the fifteenth century the extent of the Pacific ocean was not known. In fact, men's ideas as to the distribution of land and water over the earth were so indefinite that it was at first supposed that the islands which Columbus discovered belonged to the East Indies.
The claims of Spain to the Pacific Ocean were based upon its discovery by Balboa, but she never made any serious efforts to enforce them, for the attempt would have involved her in war with all the maritime nations of Europe. Spain lacked the ability to take advantage of the great discoveries which her navigators and explorers had made, and for that reason she merely looked on, though with jealous eyes, when in the eighteenth century the ships of England, France, Holland, and Russia entered the Pacific Ocean with a view to exploration and conquest.