the haze--that soft,
velvet, caressing haze of the dreamy, lazily swelling Pacific--forests
of fir and spruce and pine and cypress, in all the riot of dank spring
growth, a dense tangle of windfall and underbrush and great vines
below, festooned with the light green stringy mosses of cloud line
overhead and almost impervious to sunlight. Myriad wild fowl covered
the sea. The coast became beetling precipice, that rolled inland
forest-clad to mountains jagging ragged peaks through the clouds. This
was the Olympus Range, first noticed by Meares, and to-day seen for
miles out at sea like a ridge of opalescent domes suspended in
mid-heaven.

Vancouver was gliding into the Straits of Fuca when the slender colors
of a far ship floated above the blue horizon outward bound. Another
wave-roll, and the flag was seen to be above full-blown sails and a
square-hulled, trim little trader of America. At six in the morning of
April 29, the American saluted with a {269} cannon-shot. Vancouver
answered with a charge from his decks, rightly guessing this was Robert
Gray on the _Columbia_.

[Illustration: The _Columbia_ in a Squall.]

Puget and Menzies were sent to inquire about Gray's cruise. They
brought back word that Gray had been fifty miles up the Straits of
Fuca; and--most astounding to Vancouver's ambitions--that the American
had been off the mouth of a river south of the straits at 46 degrees 10
minutes, where the tide prevented entrance for nine days. "The river
Mr. Gray mentioned," says Vancouver, "should be south of Cape
Disappointment. This we passed on the forenoon of the 27th; and if any
inlet or river be found, it must be a {270} very intricate one,
inaccessible . . . owing to reefs and broken water. . . . I was
thoroughly convinced, as were most persons on board, that we could not
possibly have passed any cape . . . from Mendocino to Classet
(Flattery)."

Keen to prove that no Northeast Passage existed by way of the Straits
of Fuca, Vancouver headed inland, close to the south shore, where
craggy heights offered some guidance through the labyrinth of islands
and fog. Eight miles inside the straits he anchored for the night.
The next morning the sun rose over one of the fairest scenes of the
Pacific coast--an arm of the sea placid as a lake, gemmed by countless
craggy islands. On the land side were the forested valleys rolling in
to the purple folds of the mountains; and beyond, eastward, dazzling as
a hug