men; and four soldiers also fell beneath the furious
onslaught.

What need to tell of the wild scramble for the sea; of the war-horns
blowing all night in the dark; of the camp-fires glimmering from the
women's retreat in the hills? By dint of threat and show of arms and
promises, Captain Charles Clerke, who was now in command, induced the
islanders to deliver the remnants of Cook's body. In an impressive
silence, on Sunday the 21st of February 1779, the coffin containing the
great commander's bones was committed to the deep.

The sensational nature of Cook's death, within half a century of
Bering's equally tragic fate, while exploring the same unknown seas,
spread round the world the fame of the exploits of both. It was
recalled that Drake had claimed New Albion for England two centuries
before. Then rumours came that the Spanish viceroy in Mexico had been
following up the discoveries of both Drake and Bering. One Bruno
Heceta from Monterey made report that there were signs of a great
turbid river cutting the coast-line north of Drake's New Albion. In
spite of Cook's {53} adverse report, the questions were again mooted:
Where was Juan de Fuca's strait? Did it lead to Hudson Bay? Where was
this Great River of which both the inland savages and the Spanish
explorers spoke? Quebec had fallen. Scottish fur merchants of
Montreal had formed the North-West Company in opposition to the
Hudson's Bay Company, and were pushing their traders far west towards
the Rockies, far north towards the Arctic Circle. Who would be first
to find the great unknown river, to fathom the mysteries of Juan de
Fuca's strait? Dreaming of these things up in the Athabaska country,
Alexander Mackenzie, a trader for the Nor'westers, was preparing to
push his canoes down to the Arctic as a preliminary to his greater
journey to the Pacific. If Bering's crew, if Cook's crew, both sold
half-rotted cargoes of furs for thousands of pounds, how much more
easily could trading vessels properly equipped reap fortune from the
new El Dorado!

Inland by canoe from Montreal, overland by flat-boat and pack-horse
from the Missouri, across the continent from Hudson Bay, round the
world by the Cape and the Horn, across the ocean from China--it now
became a race to the Pacific. Greater wealth seemed there {54} in furs
than had been found in gold in the temples of Peru, or in silver in the
mines of Mexico. The struggle for control of the Pacific, which h