The news of the existence of navigable straits between America and Asia resulted in the turning of the attention of scientific men of Europe to the North-west, and the relinquishment for a short time of the efforts of navigators to reach the extreme North by way of Davis Strait and Baffin’s Bay. The great navigator Cook was the first to avail himself of the new passage. Not content with the splendid results achieved in his first two voyages, he determined to make yet another, and in his famous old ship, the Resolution, accompanied by Captain Clarke in the Discovery, he sailed from Plymouth for the third and last time on the 12th July, 1776.
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK.
As is known to every schoolboy, Cook reached the Sandwich Islands in safety, and, steering from them across the Pacific, he arrived on the western coast of America, in about N. lat. 50°. Steering into the inlet now known as Nootka Sound, between the island of the same name and that now called Vancouver’s, the great explorer sailed up the coast, passing between the modern Queen Charlotte’s Island and the mainland. Cook, however, made no minute examination of its many interesting phenomena, till he came to Cape Prince of Wales (N. lat. 65° 33′, W. long. 167° 59′), whence he made a flying visit to the opposite coast before entering on the passage through Behring Straits, which was the most noteworthy feature of this grand trip. Leaving him to pursue his work to the bitter end which closed his splendid career, we join, as the next hero to add any thing to our knowledge of that portion of the north-west coast now under notice, Captain John Meares, sent out in a vessel named the Nootka by the merchants of India, with orders to supplement Cook’s discoveries by every means in his power.
The Nootka reached the coast of America, in N. lat. 60° 20′, W. long. 146° 30′, after a protracted voyage across the [♦]Pacific. The winter had already set in, and it appeared impossible to do any thing in the way of exploration until the spring. Captain Meares, was, however, unwilling to return without achieving any definite result, and he therefore, in spite of the mutinous spirit of his men, resolved to land on the shores of Prince William’s Sound, and at least gain information respecting the natives of these remote latitudes.
[♦] ‘Atlantic’ replaced with ‘Pacific’
The people of Alaska, a strong, large-limbed, and tall race, with flat faces, high cheek-bones, and small, bead-like black eyes, who delighted in disfiguring their lips and noses with pendent ornaments, seem to have stood in considerable awe of their visitors, and supplied them with game and fish in abundance during the first few weeks of their stay. Early in November, however, all the terrors of the winter closed in upon the exiles; food became scarce, and, in January, scurvy in its most awful forms broke out among them. When the hoped-for spring of the ensuing year, which was to effect so much, at last set in, half the men of the expedition had found their last resting-places beneath the snow, and the survivors were reduced to the greatest extremities.
At this critical juncture two English trading vessels hove in sight, and from their captains, Portlock and Dixon, relief was obtained, though it seems to have been very grudgingly given, Meares being looked upon as an intruder likely to interfere with the profits of the fisheries. Before food was given to his starving men, a promise was exacted from him that he would not trade on the coast, and he was therefore compelled to return to the Sandwich Islands just as he might have begun his work of exploration.
Nothing daunted by this first failure, we find Meares starting again for the North in January, 1788, this time in command of two vessels, the Felice and Iphigenia, and with a crew devoted to his service. After an interesting voyage across the Pacific, and a short halt in King George’s Sound, our hero reached the Straits of Juan de Fuca, discovered, as we have seen, two centuries before by a Greek pilot of that name. Here the vessels were overtaken by a terrible storm, and, the rugged buttresses of Vancouver’s Island offering no shelter, their captains were compelled to steer for the south. The rocky shores of the modern Territory of Washington, then dotted with Indian villages, the mouth of the Columbia River, the pine-clad heights of Oregon, were passed in rapid succession—the names of Shoalwater Bay, Deception Bay, Destruction Island, and Cape Disappointment, given by Meares to the most noteworthy features of the scenery, still bearing witness to his despondency when thus driven in the opposite direction to that in which he judged his work to be awaiting him.
The early summer found the explorers off the coast of Northern California, then still known as New Albion, and after an unsuccessful, because probably a not very hearty effort to examine its fertile bays, the vessels were once more turned northward, with Nootka Sound as their goal. The weather being now more propitious, Meares sent a number of his men in one of the long-boats up the Straits of Juan de Fuca, with orders to examine them thoroughly. The sailors, weary of their long detention on shipboard, started on this trip with eager delight; but when day after day passed by, and there were no signs of their return, their master became uneasy in their behalf. At last, after a long period of suspense, the boat was seen issuing from the narrow inlet, and an eager shout of joy from the large vessels hailed the fact that the numbers of the men were undiminished. But why did they row so slowly, and what was the meaning of their air of exhaustion and dejection? As they came nearer, their comrades saw that each one of them was bleeding from terrible wounds, and when they had been helped up the ship-ladders, they told how they had been attacked as they rowed up the straits by two canoes full of armed warriors, and only escaped after a terrible struggle, which would probably have ended in the massacre of them all, had not the death of the native chief struck terror into his subjects’ hearts. As the dusky leader fell with a ball lodged in his brain, his warriors took to flight, and the English, bleeding from their wounds, made the best of their way back to their vessels.