. It engaged an
American captain, Jonathan Winship, who commanded an American crew on
the ship "Ocean." The outfit, accompanied by a hundred Aleut Indians,
with fifty-two small boats, was sent from Alaska down the California
coast in pursuit of seals. They anchored at Trinidad and spread out for
the capture of sea-otter. Eighteen miles south they sighted a bay and
finally found the obscure entrance. They entered with a boat and then
followed with the ship, which anchored nearly opposite the location of
Eureka. They found fifteen feet of water on the bar. From the large
number of Indians living on its shores, they called it the Bay of the
Indians. The entrance they named Resanof. Winship made a detailed sketch
of the bay and its surroundings, locating the Indian villages and the
small streams that enter the bay. It was sent to St. Petersburg and
entered on a Russian map. The Spaniards seem never to have known
anything of it, and the Americans evidently considered the incident of
no importance.

Humboldt as a community developed slowly. For five years its real
resources were neglected.

[Illustration: HUMBOLDT BAY--FROM RUSSIAN ATLAS THE HIDDEN
HARBOR--THRICE DISCOVERED Winship, 1806. Gregg, 1849. Ottinger, 1850.]

It was merely the shipping point from which the mines of the Trinity
and Klamath rivers were supplied by mule trains. Gradually agriculture
was developed, and from 1855 lumber was king. It is now a great domain.
The county is a little less than three times the size of the state of
Rhode Island, and its wealth of resources and its rugged and alluring
beauty are still gaining in recognition.

Its unique glory is the world-famous redwood belt. For its entire
length, one hundred and six miles of coast line, and of an average depth
of eight miles, extends the marvelous grove. Originally it comprised
540,000 acres. For more than sixty years it has been mercilessly
depleted, yet it is claimed that the supply will not be exhausted for
two hundred years. There is nothing on the face of the earth to compare
with this stand of superb timber. Trees reach two hundred and fifty feet
in height, thirty feet in diameter, and a weight of 1,250,000 pounds.
Through countless centuries these noble specimens have stood, majestic,
serene, reserved for man's use and delight. In these later years fate
has numbered their days, but let us firmly withstand their utter
demolition. It is beyond conception that all these monuments to nat