Puget Sound and its allied waters he had done exactly
what Carrier accomplished for the Atlantic side of America. His next
step was to learn if the Straits of Fuca leading northward penetrated
America and came out on the Atlantic side. That is what the old Greek
pilot in the service of New Spain, Juan de Fuca, had said some few
years after Drake and Cavendish had been out on the coast of California.

Though Vancouver explored the Pacific coast more thoroughly than all
the other navigators who had preceded him,--so thoroughly, indeed, that
nothing was left to be done by the explorers who came after him, and
modern surveys have been unable to improve upon his charts,--it seemed
his ill-luck to miss by just a hair's breadth the prizes he coveted.
He had missed the discovery of the Columbia. He was now to miss the
second largest river of the Northwest, the Fraser. He had hoped to be
the first to round the Straits of Fuca, disproving the assumption that
they led to the Atlantic; and he came on the spot only to learn that
the two English traders, Meares and Barclay, the two Americans,
Kendrick and Gray, and two Spaniards, Don Galiano and Don Valdes, had
already proved {273} practically that this part of the coast was a
large island, and the Straits of Fuca an arm of the Pacific Ocean.

Fifty Indians, in the long dugouts, of grotesquely carved prows and
gaudy paint common among Pacific tribes, escorted Vancouver's boats
northward the second week in June through the labyrinthine passageways
of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To Peter Puget was assigned
the work of coasting the mainland side and tracing every inlet to its
head waters. Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre the
way out of the Pacific. On both sides the shores now rose in beetling
precipice and steep mountains, down which foamed cataracts setting the
echo of myriad bells tinkling through the wilds. The sea was tinged
with milky sediment; but fog hung thick as a blanket; and Vancouver
passed on north without seeing Fraser River. A little farther on,
toward the end of June, he was astonished to meet a Spanish brig and
schooner exploring the straits. Don Galiano and Don Valdes told him of
the Fraser, which he had missed, and how the Straits of Fuca led out to
the North Pacific. They had also been off Puget Sound, but had not
gone inland, and brought Vancouver word that Don Quadra, the Spanish
emissary, sent to restore to England the for