as
culminated in our own day, now began. Spain, Russia, England, Canada,
and the new-born United States were the contestants in the arena. What
has reached its climax in the sluicing of two oceans together at Panama
began in the pursuit of sea-otter and seal after the voyages of Bering
and of Cook.

The United States had an added motive. On the principle of protecting
native shipping, American ports discriminated against British ships,
and British ports discriminated against American ships. It was
absolutely necessary to their existence as a nation that the United
States should build up a merchant fleet. Under fostering laws, with
the advantages of cheap labour and abundant timber, a wonderful clipper
fleet had been constructed in Massachusetts and Maryland and Virginia
ship-yards, consisting of swift sailing-vessels suitable for belting
the seas in promoting commerce and in war. The ship-yards built on
shares with the merchants, who outfitted the cargo. Builders and
merchants would then divide the profits. Under these conditions
American traders were penetrating {55} almost every sea in the world;
and the cargoes brought back built up the substantial fortunes of many
old Boston families. 'Bostonnais' these swift new traders were called
from the Baltic to China. It can be readily believed that what they
heard of Cook and Bering interested the Boston men mightily. At all
events, they fitted out two ships for the Pacific trade--ships that
were to range the seas for the United States as Drake's and Cook's had
drawn a circle round the world for England. Captain John Kendrick
commanded the _Columbia_, Captain Robert Gray the _Lady Washington_,
and on one of the vessels was a sailor who had been to the North-West
coast with Cook. In order to secure Spain's goodwill, letters were
obtained to the viceroy of Mexico; and when, in the course of the
voyage, these letters were presented to the viceroy of Mexico at San
Blas, he honoured them by at once issuing orders to the presidios of
Monterey and Santa Barbara and San Francisco to arrest both officers
and crew if the Americans touched at any Spanish port. Spain was still
dreaming of the Pacific being 'a closed sea.' She took cognizance of
Bering's exploits to the north, but she at once strove to checkmate an
advance south from {56} the north, by herself advancing north from the
south. It was in 1775 that Heceta had observed the turbid entrance to
a great river and