the islands in its vicinity are neither numerous nor large. North
of the 49th degree, on the contrary, the mainland is everywhere
penetrated by inlets and bays; and near it are thousands of islands,
many of them extensive, lying singly or in groups, separated from each
other and from the continent by narrow channels.

From the mouth of the Columbia forty-five miles of unbroken coast
reaches Whidbey's Bay, called by the Americans Bulfinches Harbour, and
not unfrequently Gray's Bay, which, with an entrance of scarce two miles
and a-half, spreads seven miles long and nine broad, forming two deep
bays like the Columbia. Here there is secure anchorage behind Point
Hanson to the south and Point Brown to the north, but the capacity of
the bay is lessened to one-third of its size by the sand banks which
encroach on it in every direction. Like the Columbia, its mouth is
obstructed by a bar which has not more than four fathoms water, and as
it stretches some three miles to seaward, with breakers on each side,
extending the whole way to the shore, the difficulty of entrance is
increased. It lies nearly east and west, and receives from the east the
waters of the river Chikelis, having its rise at the base of the
mountains, which, stretching from Mount Olympus in the north, divide the
coast from Puget's Sound. From Whidbey's Bay to Cape Flattery, about
eighty miles, but two streams, and those unimportant, break the iron
wall of the coast, which rising gradually into lofty mountains is
crowned in hoary grandeur by the snow-clad peaks of Mount Olympus. Cape
Flattery, called also Cape Classet, is a conspicuous promontory in
latitude 48 degrees 27 minutes; beyond it, distant one mile, lies
Tatouches Island, a large flat rock, with perpendicular sides, producing
a few trees, surrounded by rocky islets: it is one mile in length,
joined to the shore by a reef of rocks, and a mile further, leaving a
clear passage between them, is a reef named Ducan's Rock. Here
commences, in latitude 48 degrees 30 minutes, that mighty arm of the
sea, which has been justly named from its first discoverer, the Strait
of Juan de Fuca, and which Captain Cook passed without perceiving. The
entrance of this strait is about ten miles in width, and varies from
that to twenty with the indentations of its shores, of which the
northern, stretching to the north-west and south-east across the
entrance, gives an appearance of continuity to its line on the Pacific