could find by sailing east, and another Pope
having granted to Spain all she could find by
sailing west, the sovereigns of those countries
—then the two chief maritime powers—
concluded between each other the Treaty of
Partition of the Ocean. They were to go forth, to
discover and possess, eastward and westward
of a meridian line passing three hundred
and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verd
Islands. The Portuguese, continuing their
efforts on the coast of Africa, got round the
Cape of Good Hope to the Indian seas; and, to
the surprise and annoyance of the Spaniards,
found in Brazil a territory west of the
Atlantic, that was east of the line nominated
in the bond. The Spaniards made their way
through the straits named after Magellan,
a Portuguese captain in their employment;
who found the great southern sea so little
disturbed by storms, that he called it the
Pacific Ocean. Reaching India by their long
western route, they came into conflict with
the Portuguese. Hoping to find a nearer
passage through the mainland of America
than that through the distant southern
straits, the Spaniards proceeded not only to
occupy ground, but also to explore, as they
reached them, those inlets of the sea on the
west coast of America which might
perchance connect the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans. Such an inlet the Straits of De
Fuca, dividing the southern part of the land—
now known as Vancouver's Island—from
the main coast, was at one time supposed
to be.

In the year seventeen hundred and eighty-
eight, Lieutenant John Meares entering the
strait through which now emigrants are sailing
to the stockaded settlement of Victoria upon
Vancouver's Island (hereafter to be our future
capital in the Pacific), found a solitary rock
projecting from the sea, and natives dressed
in otter-skins, over-estimated the run of the
strait eastward, and considered that what he
saw tallied well with De Fuca's narrative.
Therefore, while he took possession of soil for
the king of Great Britain, he gave to the
inlet the name of Juan de Fuca, a Greek
pilot who first discovered it.

Ten years before that date, Captain Cook
had discovered one of the islands of a group
which he named after the First Lord of
the Admiralty, Sandwich Islands, and had
passed thence to the north-west coast of
America, which he proceeded to examine.
After a difficult northerly passage he reached
the cape forming the southern point of land at
the entrance to De Fuca Straits, when an
improvement in the weather promised him
much better speed. He, therefore, called that
point which is to be rounded by so many
adventurers to whom Hope tells her tale,
Cape Flattery. Cook, sailing northward, put
into the bay, which he called Nootka Sound,
on the south-west coast of the great island,
which he believed to be part of the main
continent.

The natives crowded to him, and he found
them friendly, they traded in their own
produce, displayed a firm sense of property
in what their land produced, and an eagerness
to possess what the strangers brought,—
especially iron, brass, or any kind of metal,—
that made thieves of them all. Captain Cook
considered them to be in other respects a
kindly people, courteous and docile, but liable
to sudden gusts of passion. Others have
since declared them to be sly, fierce, and
revengeful. After Cook's time, Nootka Sound
was used as the chief harbour in those
waters.

We return to Lieutenant Meares. Sundry
observations had revived the stories of
the voyages of De Fuca, and of an Admiral
Fuente, who had sailed two hundred and
sixty leagues through a collection of islands,
called the Archipelago of Saint Lazarus, which
was supposed to occupy the whole of the
north-western region of America. Captain
Berkeley, an Englishman in the service of
the Austrian East India Company, observed
in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-
seven, the inland sea-passage, north of Cape
Flattery, which Captain Cook had overlooked,
and sent a boat ashore to the mainland south
of the Cape. Its crew, however, was murdered
by the savages. To John Meares, a lieutenant
in the British navy, Berkeley mentioned
at Canton what he had noticed, and Mr.
Meares, journeying soon afterwards to
Nootka on a trading expedition, bought there
a piece of ground from the chief, Maquinna,
and built on it within a large fortified enclosure,
a house of sufficient size to contain all
his men. He left a party of them occupied
in the construction of a small vessel, while he
himself went on a trip of exploration to the
southern strait, named by him, as we have
already said, after De Fuca.

Very soon afterwards there arose a dispute
between the governments of Spain and
England on the subject of affairs at Nootka Sound.
Spain, grounding mainly upon papal grant,
and upon rights of prior discovery a claim of
sovereignty on the north-west coast of
America, seized at Nootka British vessels, and
also took possession of the building or buildings
that had been erected by Mr. Meares.
Mr. Meares addressed a memorial to parliament.
England assumed high ground, an
armament was equipped, and in the Spanish
convention consequent upon that armament,
restitution was offered to England for the
captures and aggressions made by the
subjects of His Catholic Majesty, together with
an acknowledgment of equal right with
Spain to the prosecution of commerce in
those seas, reputed before to belong only to
the Spanish crown.

The fisheries and the fur-trade to China
being regarded as important to this country,
it was resolved to send an officer to Nootka
to receive back, in form, a restitution of the
territories on which the Spaniards had seized;