unknown seas, and in every respect a very great man. His services to mankind were so highly esteemed that when Franklin was in Paris as representative of the United Colonies he was empowered to issue letters of marque against the English, but in doing so, inserted an instruction that if any of the holders of such letters should fall in with vessels commanded by Captain Cook, he was to be shown every respect and be permitted to pass unattacked on account of the benefits he had conferred on mankind, through his important discoveries.

Cook is described as over six feet high, thin and spare, small head, forehead broad, dark brown hair, rolled back and tied behind, nose long and straight, high cheek bones, small brown eyes, and quick and piercing, face long, chin round and full with mouth firmly set-a striking, austere face, showing his Scotch descent, and indicative of the man most remarkable for patience, resolution, perseverance and unfaltering courage.

The irony of fate which snuffed out the life of a great and good man, and deprived him of the honor and credit of opening to the world a great region. filled with unexampled wealth, yet even in this last fateful voyage, gave to the commercial world a clue to vast wealth which was eagerly snapped up by citizens of four great nations. In Cook's brief stay at Nootka sound, he got in barter, a small bale of very fine furs from the Indians. These furs reached China after the death of Cook, and their extraordinary quality at once so caught the attention of all vessels trading to Canton, that the news of it spread rapidly to England, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. In consequence of this information there was a sort of gold mine stampede to the new-found El Dorado in the fur-bearing haunts of the north Pacific, which set in toward the northwest seven years after Cook had sailed away. This was the beginning of the great fur trade from which the Hudson's Bay Company made so many royal millionaires in England.

Following up this discovery of rich furs in the northwest we find Captain James Hanna, an Englishman, coming over from China in a little brig of sixty tons, with twenty men. He reached Nootka sound in August, 1785, and he had no sooner anchored his little ship than the Indians attacked him. He gave them a hot reception, drove them off, and they then obligingly turned around and offered to trade. The sea-rover accommodated them, and in exchange for a lot of cheap knives, shirts, beads and trinkets, the natives handed over five hundred and sixty sea otter skins, which would be worth at this day a quarter of a million dollars. This was the beginning of the great fur trade in old Oregon, Alaska and California.

The next navigator to visit this region after Hanna, was the famous French explorer, La Perouse, who was sent out by the French king to examine such parts of northwestern America as had not been explored by Captain Cook, to seek an inter-oceanic passage, to make observations on the country, its people and products, to obtain reliable information as to the fur trade, the extent of the Spanish settlements, the region in which furs might be taken without giving offense to Spain, and the inducements to French enterprise. But while the commander of the expedition, like Cook, lost his life on this voyage, it was in many respects one of the most valuable of all the exploring expeditions to this region. La Perouse was accompanied by a corps of scientific observers able to report in full the value of the country, and their observations and the report of the voyage

made up four volumes with a book of maps, and really gave to the world the first scientific knowledge of this vast region. The expedition had also another very decisive feature as showing at that time what other nations than England thought of the ownership of the country. La Perouse was instructed to ascertain the extent and limits of the rights of Spain, and no reference was made whatever to any rights of England, clearly showing that in the estimation of other nations, England had no rights on the Pacific coast as against Spain or any other power. Following La Perouse in 1786, three fur-trading expeditions were dispatched to the northwest coast. One of these under the command of Captains Meares and Tipping, with the ships Nootka and Sea Otter, was fitted out in Bengal and traded with the Indians in Prince Williams sound and the Alaskan coast. A second expedition was fitted out by English merchants at Bombay, sailing under the flag of the East India Company, reached Nootka sound in June, 1786, and secured six hundred sea otter skins, not as many as they hoped for, because the Indians had promised to save their skins for Captain Hanna who had given them a thrashing, and who returned in August. This expedition from Bombay is remarkable for more than its six hundred sea otter pelts. It left behind, at his own request, the first white man to reside on the northwest coast of Americaone John McKey-who being in bad health chose to take his chances with the Indians, the chief promising him protection. McKey lived for over a year with the Indians, taking a native woman for a wife, was well treated but endured many hardships, kept a journal of his experiences, and gave to the world, through Captain Barclay, who carried him away to China, the geographical fact that Vancouver island was not a part of the mainland.

The third expedition of that year was two ships fitted out in England in 1785, but did not reach the Pacific coast until 1786. It was sent out by what was called King George's Sound Company, an association of British merchants acting under licenses from the South Sea and East India monopolies, and was commanded by Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, both of whom had been with Cook on his last voyage. They reached the coast of Alaska in July, 1786, then drifted south intending to winter at Nootka, but from bad weather and other causes failed to find harbors and sailed to the Sandwich islands, where they wintered. They returned to the coast in 1787, and repeated their cruise of drifting southward from Alaska. Portlock and Dixon named several points on the coast on this cruise, secured two thousand five hundred and fifty sea otter skins which they sold in China for $54,857, while the whole number of otter pelts secured by the other fur traders-Hanna, Strange, Meares and Barclay down to the end of 1787 was only 2,481 skins. Captain Barclay reached the coast at Nootka in June, 1787, coming out as a commander of the ship Imperial Eagle, which sailed from the Belgian port of Ostend under the flag of the Austrian East India Company, making another nation engaging in the fur trade. Barclay went no further north than Nootka, got eight hundred otter skins and then sailed southward, discovering Barclay sound; continuing his voyage south, passing the Strait of Fuca without seeing it, he sent off a boat to enter a river, probably the Quillayute, with five men and a boatswain's mate, where they were attacked by the Indians and all killed. These were probably the same savages that gave Heceta and his men such a battle in 1775. Mrs. Barclay had accompanied

the captain on his voyage, and is entitled to the distinction of being the first white woman to land on the soil of old Oregon.

Following up Captain Barclay's careful survey of the coast, the Spanish government sent north in 1788 another exploration to find out what the Russians were doing on the coast; it had been reported that the Russians had four settlements, coming down as far south as Nootka, and it was feared that the Russians might come still farther south, as probably they did. This Spanish expedition consisted of two vessels, commanded by Martinez and De Haro, for each of which important coast points have been named. This expedition shows clearly enough that Spain was asserting her title to the coast against all the world as far up as 60 degrees north.

And now we reach the date when citizens of the United States for the first time show an interest in the country we write this book about. Here for the first time do the "Bostons" and the "King George" men (as the Indians named them) come in contact as explorers, traders and rivals for the great northwest. For the year 1788 the history of this vast region is made up of the movements of the American captains, Kendrick and Gray, in command of the ship Columbia and the sloop Lady Washington, and the British captains, Meares in command of the Felice, and Douglas in command of the Iphigenia. All these old sea captains were exceedingly polite to each other, accepting various favors, the Americans firing a salute on the launching of Meares' new schooner, but each man kept a sharp lookout for "the main chance."

Captain Gray, the first American citizen to set eyes on the coast of Oregon, hailed the land near the boundary between California and Oregon, August 2, 1788, and coasted north, keeping in close to the shore. Two days after sighting land, ten natives came off in a canoe and gave the strangers a friendly greeting. On the fourteenth of August, Gray crossed over the Tillamook bar and anchored in thirteen feet of water near where the town of Bay City is now located. The Indians appeared to be friendly, furnishing large quantities of fish and berries. without payment, and trading furs freely for iron implements, taking what was offered in exchange, and also furnishing wood and water as desired. Gray thought he had entered the mouth of the great "River of the West," which Jonathan Carver had figured out on his map of the northwest, made ten years prior, from conversations he had with Indians on the Mississippi river, near where St. Paul is located. But remaining a few days in the Tillamook Bay to recuperate his men from scurvy, he got into a hot fight with the Indians about a cutlass one of them had stolen from his servant, Lopez. Poor Lopez, a native of the Cape Verde islands, was killed, three sailors badly beaten, barely escaping with their lives, the captain had to drive the savages away with the swivel gun, killing many of them, and naming the place "Murderers' Harbor." The speculators who are now so noisily "boosting" that beautiful sheet of water for a fashionable summer resort, will hardly adopt its first white man's name as an attractive historical suggestion. Tillamook bay may be considered the first harbor on the coast of Oregon entered by a white man's ship; and all the more appreciated is the fact that the ship was American, and that its captain was the discoverer of our grand river, Columbia.

Leaving Tillamook and proceeding north up the coast, the navigators found nothing new in adventure or discovery. They did not even see the entrance to