southern sky-line.
In fair {48} weather the long pink ridge of the Olympics could be seen
towards Puget Sound. Inland from Nootka were vast mountain ridges
heavily forested to the very clouds with fir trees and spruce of
incredible size. Lower down grew cypress, with gnarled red roots
entangling the rocks to the very water's edge, Spanish moss swinging
from branch to branch, and partridge drumming in the underbrush. For a
month the deep-sea travellers enjoyed a welcome furlough on shore. One
night the underbrush surrounding the encampment was found to be
literally alive with painted warriors. Cook demanded an explanation of
the grand 'tyee' or chief. The Indian explained that these were guards
to protect the encampment. However that might be, Cook deemed it well
to be off.

On May 1 the ships were skirting the Sitka coast, which Chirikoff and
Bering had explored a quarter of a century previously. St Elias,
Bering's landfall, was sighted. So was the spider-shaped bay now known
as Prince William Sound. The Indians here resembled the Eskimos of
Greenland so strongly that the hopes of the explorers began to rise.
So keen were they to prove the existence of a passage to the Atlantic
that when swords, {49} beads, powder, evidently obtained from white
traders, were observed among the Indians, the Englishmen tried to
persuade themselves that these Indians must be in communication with
the Indians of the domain of the Hudson's Bay Company, forgetting that
Russians had been on the ground for forty years. Cook sailed round the
coast, past Cape Prince of Wales and through Bering Strait, keeping his
prows northward until an impassable wall of ice barred his way. Having
now thoroughly explored the coast, Cook was satisfied that Drake and
Bering had been right. There was no passage east. He then crossed to
Siberia, sailed down the Asiatic coast, and visited the Aleutian
Islands. The Russians of Oonalaska and Kamchatka resented the English
intrusion on their hunting-ground, while the English refused to
acknowledge that they were invading Russian territory.

It was planned to winter and repair the ships at the Sandwich Islands.
This part of Cook's voyage does not concern Canada. It was something
like a repetition of the transgressions of the Russian outlaw hunters,
and was followed by the penalty that transgressors pay. The islanders
had welcomed the white men as demi-gods, but the gods {50} proved to
have feet of cl