Puget's exertions, the
fourth extremity of it I named Puget Sound."

A very interesting officer seems to have been this lieutenant, Peter
Puget, whose soundings gave the name to the American Mediterranean. Once,
after the firing of muskets to overawe hostile Indians, who merely pouted
out their lips, and uttered, "Poo hoo! poo hoo!" he ordered the discharge
of a heavy gun, and was amused to note the silence that followed. It was
in April and May, 1792, that Puget explored the violet waters of the great
inland sea, a work which he seems to have done with the enthusiasm of a
romancer as well as of a naval officer.

Mount Hood was named for Lord Hood, and Mount Saint Helens was named in
1792, in the month of October, "in honor of his Britannic Majesty's
ambassador at the court of Madrid." But one of the most interesting of all
of Vancouver's notes is the following:

"The weather was serene and pleasant, and the country continued to exhibit
the same luxuriant appearance. At its northern extremity Mount Baker bore
compass; the round, snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity,
after my friend Rear-Admiral Ranier, I distinguished by the name of Mount
Ranier, May, 1792." This mountain is now Mount Tacoma.

The spring of 1892 ought to be historically very interesting to the State
of Washington, and it is likely to be so.

II.

THE OREGON TRAIL.

"There is the East. There lies the road to India."

Such was Senator Thomas H. Benton's view of the coast and harbors of
Oregon. He saw the advantage of securing to the United States the
Columbia River and its great basin, and the Puget Sea; and he made himself
the champion of Oregon and Washington.

In Thomas Jefferson's administration far-seeing people began to talk of a
road across the continent, and a port on the Pacific. The St. Louis
fur-traders had been making a way to the Rockies for years, and in 1810
John Jacob Astor sent a ship around Cape Horn, to establish a post for the
fur-trade on the Pacific Coast, and also sent an expedition of some sixty
persons from St. Louis, overland, by the way of the Missouri and
Yellowstone, to the Columbia River. The pioneer ship was called the
Tonquin. She arrived at the mouth of the Columbia before the overland
expedition. These traders came together at last, and founded Astoria, on
the Columbia.

Ships now began to sail for Astoria, and the trading-post flourished in
the beautiful climate and amid the majestic sce