Admiral Peter Rainier, of the British Navy, in whose honor Captain George Vancouver, in 1792, named the great peak "Mt. Rainier."
Before quitting with Vancouver and eighteenth-century history of the Mountain, I note that our peak enjoyed a further honor. Captain Vancouver records an interesting event that took place on the anniversary of King George's birth;—"on which auspicious day," he says, "I had long since designed to take formal possession of all the countries we had lately been employed in exploring, in the name of, and for, His Britannic Majesty, his heirs and successors." And he did!
First picture of the Mountain, from Vancouver's "Voyage of Discovery," London, 1798.
After Vancouver's brief mention, and the caricature of our peak printed in his work, literature is practically silent about the Mountain for more than sixty years. Those years witnessed the failure of England's memorable struggle to make good Vancouver's "annexation." Oregon was at last a state. Out of its original area Washington Territory had just been carved. In that year of 1853 came Theodore Winthrop, of the old New England family, who was destined to a lasting and pathetic fame as an author of delightful books and a victim of the first battle of the Civil War. Sailing into what is now the harbor of the city of Tacoma, he there beheld the peak. We feel his enthusiasm as he tells of the appeal it made to him.
Climbers on St. Elmo Pass, seen from the upper side.
We had rounded a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface? No cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, swelling and seeming to fill the aerial spheres, as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky.