ailed.
England demanded, among other things, the restoration of the buildings
and the land, and full reparation for all losses. Spain decided to
submit, and accordingly the Nootka Convention was signed by the two
powers in October 1790. Two ships, the _Discovery_ and the _Chatham_,
were then fitted out by the British Admiralty for an expedition to the
Pacific to receive formal surrender of the property from Spain, and
also to chart the whole coast of the Pacific from Drake's New Albion to
the Russian possessions at Sitka. This expedition was commanded by
Captain George Vancouver, who had been on the Pacific with Cook. It
was April 1792 when Vancouver came up abreast of Cape Disappointment.
Was it chance, or fate, that a gale drove him off-shore just two weeks
before a rival explorer entered the mouth of the great unknown river
that lay on his vessel's starboard bow? But for this mishap Vancouver
might have discovered {67} the Columbia, and England might have made
good her claim to the territory which is now Oregon and Washington and
Idaho. Vancouver's ships were gliding into the Strait of Juan de Fuca
when they met a square-hulled, trim little trader under the flag of the
United States. It was the _Columbia_, commanded by Robert Gray. The
American told an astounding story. He had found Bruno Heceta's River
of the West. Vancouver refused to credit the news; yet there was the
ship's log; there were the details--landmarks, soundings, anchorages
for twenty miles up the Columbia from its mouth. Gray had, indeed,
been up the river, and had crossed the bar and come out on the Pacific
again.

Vancouver now headed his ships inland and proceeded to explore Puget
Sound. Never before had white men's boats cruised the waters of that
spider-shaped sea. Every inlet of the tortuous coasts was penetrated
and surveyed, to make certain that no passage to the north-east lay
through these waters. In June the explorers passed up the Strait of
Georgia. A thick fog hid from them what would have proved an important
discovery--the mouth of the Fraser river. Some distance north of
Burrard Inlet the explorers met the two {68} Spanish ships which the
viceroy of Mexico had sent out, the _Sutil_ and the _Mexicana_,
commanded respectively by Don Galiano and Don Valdes. From them
Vancouver learned that Don Quadra, the Spanish representative, was
awaiting him at Nootka, prepared to restore the forts and property as
agreed in the Nootka