never entered
Columbia's waters. The next two years Vancouver spends exploring every
nook and inlet from Columbia River to Lynn Canal. Once and for all and
forever he disproves the myth of a Northeast Passage. His work was
negative, but it established English rights where America's claims
ceased and Russia's began, namely between Columbia River and Sitka, or
in what is now known as British Columbia.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER]

[Illustration: NOOTKA SOUND (From an engraving in Vancouver's journal)]

As the beaver had lured French bushrovers from the St. Lawrence to the
Rockies, so the sea otter led the way to the exploration of the Pacific
Coast. Artist's brush and novelist's pen have drawn all the romance
and the glamour and the adventure of the beaver hunter's life, but the
sea-otter hunter's life is {324} almost an untold tale. Pacific Coast
Indians were employed by the white traders for this wildest of hunting.
The sea otter is like neither otter nor beaver, though possessing
habits akin to both. In size, when full-grown, it is about the length
of a man. Its pelt has the ebony shimmer of seal tipped with silver.
Cradled on the waves, sleeping on their backs in the sea, playful as
kittens, the sea otters only come ashore when driven by fierce gales;
but they must come above to breathe, for the wave wash of storm would
smother them. Their favorite sleeping grounds used to be the kelp beds
of the Alaskan Islands. Storm or calm, to the kelp beds rode the
Indian hunters in their boats of oiled skin light as paper. If heavy
surf ran, concealing sight and sound, the hunters stood along shore
shouting through the surf and waiting for the wave wash to carry in the
dead body; if the sea were calm, the hunters circled in bands of twenty
or thirty, spearing the sea otter as it came up to breathe; but the
best hunting was when hurricane gales churned sea and air to spray.
Then the sea otter came to the kelp beds in herds, and through the
storm over the wave-dashed reefs, like very spirits of the storm
incarnate, rushed the hunters, spear in hand. It is not surprising
that the sea-otter hunters perished by tens of thousands every year, or
that the sea otter dwindled from a yield of 100,000 a year to a paltry
200 of the present day.

Meanwhile Nor'west traders from Montreal and Quebec, English traders
from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Athabasca and
the Rockies. What lies bey