he was floated out with all on board. On the morning of
the 20th the woods were seen to be alive with Indians. The Indians had
not counted on their prey escaping by sea, and an old chief came
suavely aboard offering Gray sea-otter skins if the 'Bostonnais' would
go ashore to trade. Gray slapped the old rascal across the face; the
Indian was over the side at a plunge, and the marauders were seen no
more.

In spite of the difficulties and dangers it presented, Gray determined
to make another effort to find the river which old Bruno Heceta had
sighted in 1775. And early in April, after sending his mate north on
the little vessel _Adventure_ to trade, Gray sailed away south on the
_Columbia_. Let us leave him for the present stealing furtively along
the coast from Cape Flattery to Cape Disappointment.

It was the spring of 1792. The Spaniard Elisa of Nootka had for a year
kept his pilot Narvaez, in a crazy little schooner crowded {63} with
thirty sailors, charting north-east past the harbour of Victoria,
through Haro Strait, following very much the same channel that steamers
follow to-day as they ply between Victoria and Vancouver. East of a
high island, where holiday folk now have their summer camps, Pilot
Narvaez came on the estuary of a great river, which he called Boca de
Florida Blanca. This could not be Bruno Heceta's river, for this was
farther north and inland. It was a new river, with wonderful purple
water--the purple of river silt blending with ocean blue. The banks
were wooded to the very water's edge with huge-girthed and mossed
trees, such as we to-day see in Stanley Park, Vancouver. The river
swept down behind a deep harbour, with forested heights between
river-mouth and roadstead, as if nature had purposely interposed to
guard this harbour against the deposit of silt borne down by the mighty
stream. To-day a boulevard rises from the land-locked harbour and goes
over the heights to the river-mouth like the arc of a bow; the finest
residences of the Canadian Pacific coast stand there; and the river is
lined with mile upon mile of lumber-yards and saw-mills. Where the
rock projects like a hand into the turbid waters stands {64} a crowded
city, built like New York on what is almost an island. Where the
opposite shores slope down in a natural park are rising the buildings
of a great university. The ragged starveling crew of Pilot Narvaez had
found what are now known as Burrard Inlet, Vancouver C