If the sailing be early in the evening, midnight is saluted by the lights of Port Townsend, than which no city on the Pacific Coast has a bolder or more beautiful situation.
The splendid water avenue—the burning "Opal-Way"—that leads the ocean into these inland seas was named in 1788 by John Meares, a retired lieutenant of the British navy, for Juan de Fuca (whose real name was Apostolos Valerianos), a Greek pilot who, in 1592, was sent out in a small "caravela" by the Viceroy of Mexico in search of the fabled "Strait of Anian," or "Northwest Passage"—supposed to lead from the Pacific to the Atlantic north of forty degrees of latitude.
As early as the year 1500 this strait was supposed to have been discovered by a Portuguese navigator named Cortereal, and to have been named by him for one of his brothers who accompanied him.
The names of certain other early navigators are mentioned in connection with the "Strait of Anian." Cabot is reported vaguely as having located it "neere the 318 meridian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the eleuation, continuing the same bredth about 10 degrees West, where it openeth Southerly more and more, until it come under the tropicke of Cancer, and so runneth into Mar del Zur, at least 18 degrees more in bredth there than where it began;" Frobisher; Urdaneta, "a Fryer of Mexico, who came out of Mar del Zur this way into Germanie;" and several others whose stories of having sailed the dream-strait that was then supposed to lead from ocean to ocean are not now considered seriously until we come to Juan de Fuca, who claimed that in his "caravela" he followed the coast "vntill hee came to the latitude of fortie seuen degrees, and that there finding that the land trended North and Northeast, with a broad Inlet of Sea between 47 and 48 degrees of Latitude, hee entered thereinto, sayling therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime Northwest and Northeast and North, and also East and Southeastward, and very much broader sea then was at said entrance, and that hee passed by diuers Ilands in that sayling. And that at the entrance of this said Strait, there is on the Northwest coast thereof, a great Hedland or Iland, with an exceeding high pinacle or spired Rocke, like a pillar, thereupon."
He landed and saw people clothed in the skins of beasts; and he reported the land fruitful, and rich in gold, silver, and pearl.
Bancroft and some other historians consider the story of Juan de Fuca's entrance to Puget Sound the purest fiction, claiming that his descriptions are inaccurate and that no pinnacled or spired rock is to be found in the vicinity mentioned.
Meares, however, and many people of intelligence gave it credence; and when we consider the differences in the descriptions of other places by early navigators, it is not difficult to believe that Juan de Fuca really sailed into the strait that now bears his name. Schwatka speaks of him as, "An explorer—if such he may be called—who never entered this beautiful sheet of water, and who owes his immortality to an audacious guess, which came so near the truth as to deceive the scientific world for many a century."
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is more than eighty miles long and from ten to twelve wide, with a depth of about six hundred feet. At the eastern end it widens into an open sea or sound where beauty blooms like a rose, and from which forest-bordered water-ways wind slenderly in every direction.
From this vicinity, on clear days, may be seen the Olympic Mountains floating in the west; Mount Rainier, in the south; the lower peaks of the Crown Mountains in the north; and Mount Baker—or Kulshan, as the Indians named it—in the east.
The Island of San Juan, lying east of the southern end of Vancouver Island, is perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most historic, on the Pacific Coast. It is the island that barely escaped causing a declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States, over the international boundary, in the late fifties. For so small an island—it is not more than fifteen miles long, by from six to eight wide—it has figured importantly in large affairs.
The earliest trouble over the boundary between Vancouver Island and Washington arose in 1854. Both countries claimed ownership of San Juan and other islands near by, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 having failed to make it clear whether the boundary was through the Canal de Haro or the Strait of Rosario.
I. N. Ebey, American Collector of Customs, learning that several thousand head of sheep, cattle, and hogs had been shipped to San Juan without compliance with customs regulations, visited the island and was promptly insulted by a British justice of the peace. The Otter made her appearance in the harbor, bearing James Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island and vice-admiral of the British navy; but nothing daunted, Mr. Ebey stationed Inspector Webber upon the island, declaring that he would continue to discharge his official duties. The final trouble arose, however, in 1859, when an American resident shot a British pig; and serious trouble was precipitated as swiftly as when a United States warship was blown up in Havana Harbor. General Harney hastily established military quarters on one end of the island, known as the American Camp, Captain Pickett transferring his company from Fort Bellingham for this purpose. English Camp was established on the northern end. Warships kept guard in the harbors. Joint occupation was agreed upon, and until 1871 the two camps were maintained, the friendliest social relations existing between them. In that year the Emperor of Germany was chosen as arbitrator, and decided in favor of the United States, the British withdrawing the following year.
Until 1895 the British captain's house still stood upon its beautiful bluff, a thousand feet above the winding blue bay, the shore descending in steep, splendid terraces to the water, stairwayed in stone, and grown with old and noble trees. Macadam roads led several miles across the island; the old block-house of pioneer days remained at the water's edge; and clustered around the old parade ground—now, alas! a meadow of hay—were the quarters of the officers, overgrown with English ivy. The captain's house, which has now been destroyed by fire, was a low, eight-roomed house with an immense fireplace in each room; the old claret- and ivory-striped wall-paper—which had been brought "around the Horn" at immense cost—was still on the walls. Gay were the scenes and royal the hospitalities of this house in the good days of the sixties. Its site, commanding the straits, is one of the most effective on the Pacific Coast; and at the present writing it is extremely probable that a captain's house may again rise among the old trees on the terraced bluff—but not for the occupancy of a British captain.
Every land may occasionally have a beautiful sunset, and many lands have gorgeous and brilliant ones; but nowhere have they such softly burning, milky-rose, opaline effects as on this inland sea.
Their enchanting beauty is doubtless due to the many wooded islands which lift dark green forestated hills around open sweeps of water, whereon settle delicate mists. When the fires of sunrise or of sunset sink through these mists, the splendor of coloring is marvellous and not equalled anywhere. It is as though the whole sound were one great opal, which had broken apart and flung its escaping fires of rose, amethyst, amber, and green up through the maze of trembling pearl above it. The unusual beauty of its sunsets long ago gave Puget Sound the poetic name of Opal-Sea or Sea of Opal.
CHAPTER II
After passing the lighthouse on the eastern end of Vancouver Island, Alaskan steamers continue on a northerly course and enter the Gulf of Georgia through Active Pass, between Mayne and Galiana islands. This pass is guarded by a light on Mayne Island, to the steamer's starboard, going north.
The Gulf of Georgia is a bold and sweeping body of water. It is usually of a deep violet or a warm purplish gray in tone. At its widest, it is fully sixty miles—although its average width is from twenty to thirty miles—and it rolls between the mainland and Vancouver Island for more than one hundred miles.
The real sea lover will find an indescribable charm in this gulf, and will not miss an hour of it. It has the boldness and the sweep of the ocean, but the setting, the coloring, and the fragrance of the forest-bordered, snow-peaked sea. A few miles above the boundary, the Fraser River pours its turbulent waters into