se England--Vancouver is sent out ostensibly to
settle the Quarrel between Fur Traders and Spanish Governors at
Nootka--Incidentally, he is to complete the Exploration of America's
West Coast and take Possession for England of Unclaimed Territory--The
Myth of a Northeast Passage dispelled forever

With Gray's entrance of the Columbia, the great drama of discovery on
the northwest coast of America was drawing to a close.

After the death of Bering on the Commander Islands, and of Cook at
Hawaii, while on voyages to prove there was no Northeast Passage, no
open waterway between Pacific and Atlantic, it seems impossible that
the myth of an open sea from Asia to Europe could still delude men; but
it was in hunting for China that Columbus found America; and it was in
hunting for a something that had no existence except in the foolish
theories of the schoolmen that the whole northwest coast of America was
exploited.

{264} Bering had been called "coward" for not sailing through a solid
continent. Cook was accused of fur trading, "pottering in peltries,"
to the neglect of discovery, because his crews sold their sea-otter at
profit. To be sure, the combined results of Bering's and Cook's
voyages proved there was no waterway through Alaska to the Atlantic;
but in addition to blackening the reputations of the two great
navigators in order to throw discredit on their conclusions, the
schoolmen bellicosely demanded--Might there not be a passage south of
Alaska, between Russia's claim on the north and Spain's on the south?
Both Bering and Cook had been driven out from this section of the coast
by gales. This left a thousand miles of American coast unexplored.
Cook had said there were no Straits of Fuca, of which the old Greek
pilot in the service of New Spain had told legends of fictitious
voyages two centuries before; yet Barclay, an East India English
trader, had been up those very straits. So had Meares, another trader.
So had Kendrick and Gray, the two Americans. This was the very section
which Bering and Cook had left untouched; and who could tell where
these straits might lead? They were like a second Mediterranean.
Meares argued they might connect with Hudson Bay.

Then Spain had forced matters to a climax by seizing Meares's vessels
and fort at Nootka as contraband. That had only one meaning: Spain was
trying to lay hands on everything from New Spain to Russian {265}
territory on the north. If Spain claimed all