Once upon a time a Greek sailor was cast away on the shore, where the northmost Mexican coast merged into unknown lands.
He remained for years a wanderer; but when finally fate threw him again upon Adriatic coasts, he was the narrator of strange stories, and the projector of far distant enterprises.
North of California’s shore, there was, he said, a large island. Between this island and the mainland lay a gulf which led to those other gulfs, which, on the Atlantic verge, Cartier and Hudson had made known to Europe.
In these days kings and viceroys gladly listened to a wanderer’s story. The Greek was sent back to the coasts he had discovered, commissioned to fortify the Straits he called Annian, against English ships seeking through this outlet the northern passage to Cathay.
Over the rest time has drawn a cloud. It is said that the Greek sailor failed and died. His story became matter of doubt. More than 300 years passed away; Cook sought in vain for the strait, and the gulf beyond it.
Another English sailor was more fortunate; and in 1756 a lonely ship passed between the island and the mainland, and the long, doubtful channel was named “Juan de Fuça,” after the nickname of the forgotten Greek.
To fortify the Straits of Annian was deemed the dream of an enthusiast; yet by a strange coincidence, we see to-day its realization, and the Island of San Juan, our latest loss, has now upon its shores a hostile garrison, bent upon closing the Straits of Fuça against the ships of England.
North of California, and south of British Columbia, there lies a vast region. Rich in forest, prairie, snow-clad peak, alluvial meadow, hill pasture, and rolling table-land. It has all that nature can give a nation; its climate is that of England; its peaks are as lofty as Mont Blanc; its meadows as rich as the vales of Somerset.
The Spaniard knew it by repute, and named it Oregon, after the river which we call the Columbia. Oregon was at that time the entire west of the Rocky Mountains, to the north of California. Oregon had long been a mystic land, a realm of fable. Carver, the indefatigable, had striven to reach the great river of the west, whose source lay near that of the Mississipi. The Indians had told him that where the Mississipi had its birth in the shining mountains, another vast river also rose, and flowed west into the shoreless sea. Carver failed to reach the shining mountains; his dream remained to him. “Probably,” he writes, “in future ages they (the mountains) may be found to contain more riches in their bowels than those of Indostan or Malabar, or that are produced on the golden Gulf of Guinea, nor will I except even the Peruvian mines.” To-day that dream comes true, and from the caverns of the shining mountains men draw forth more gold and silver than all these golden realms enumerated by the baffled Carver ever produced. But the road which Carver had pointed out was soon to be followed.
In the first years of the new century men penetrated the gorges of the shining mountain, and reached the great river of the west; but they hunted for furs, and not for gold; and fur-hunters keep to themselves the knowledge of their discoveries. Before long the great Republic born upon the Atlantic shores began to stretch its infant arms towards the dim Pacific.