An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 3

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

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As the climate and the soil of Eastern Wash- ington has a remarkably uniform average, so its productions are quite uniforin in character and quality. The cereals, especially wheat, produce at their best both of quantity and quality nearly everywhere, if we except some of the drier por- tions where irrigation must be resorted to. Some of the warmer valleys, like the Yakima, Snake river and Columbia river, are wonderfully

prolific in peaches, grapes, melons and hops. The strawberry, blackberry, currant, etc., thrive abundantly everywhere; and, indeed, to sum np all that needs to be said of the productions of the country without going into statistics, all the staple cereals and fruits of the temperate lati- tudes; those cereals and fruits that grow in company with the strongest manhood, and upon which that manhood grows; grow as abundantly and ripen as perfectly within the bounds of the country thus indicated as anywhere between the seas. So, with its magnificent scenery, its pure atmosphere, its crystalline waters, its abundant and healthy food, Eastern Washington should and doubtless will contribute some of the best and noblest to the " crowning race of human kind."

In treating of the climate of Washington, it is proper that we notice the fact that no part of the State is subject to those violent changes in temperature and atmospheric enrrents that result, in the States east of the Rocky mountains, in tornadoes and cyclones, that are so destruc- tive to property, and often to human life. They are, in fact, unknown there; and while the moun- tain ranges stand where they are, and the Pa- cific rolls over its present bed, they never can be known. The same may be said of the terrible thunder storms that shake and startle the Mis- sissippi and Missouri valleys. They are un- known in all the region west of the Rocky mountains. It is too much a broken surface, and the soft breath of the great sea is wafted so genially over all even to permit it.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER II.

EARLIEST DISCOVERIES ON THE NORTHWEST COAST-SPAIN LEADS DISCOVERIES -- A NORTHWEST PASSAGE SOUGHT-MAGELLAN -- CORTEZ IN MEXICO-SPAIN MISTRESS OF THE PACIFIC-THE BUCCANEERS-SIR FRANCIS DRAKE -- CAVINDISH-STRAITS OF AMAN -- RUSSIAN EXPLORATIONS -VITUS BEHRING -- RUSSIA'S FAILURE-CAPTAIN COOK -FIRST ENGLISHI EXPLORATIONS- COOK'S DEATH -- SPAIN AGAIN ESSAYS DISCOVERY-FRANCISCO ELISA -- DISCOVERIES OF 1791 -- A NEW FLAG ON THE SEAS-SPANISH EFFORTS CEASE.

丁 HE earliest discoveries on the American continent made by any portion of the civilized world, if we do not connt the somewhat mythical ones attributed to Northmen on the coast of Greenland, were made in 1492, under the auspices of Spain; at that time one of the most powerful and aggressive nations of Europe. The discovery of a New World behind the western seas kindled an age already fired with a spirit of romantic adventure and religious zeal to a much greater enthusiasm of conquest and subjugation. As Spain had led in the discoveries that had thns opened the new continent to the ambitions of the enterprising and adventurous, it was only natural that her sailors should haste to follow the path that the galleys of Columbus had marked for them over the seas, and her soldier adventurers should enter on a course of conquest in the countries discovered. The stories of the sailors who had returned to the ports of Spain invested the new lands visited by them with a glory of fabulous wealth that could easily be gathered from the semi-civilized savage tribes found there by the stronger arms of the men of Castile.

Inspired by these marvelons stories, three years had not passed before they had begun the con- qnest of the islands off the southeastern coast of the American mainland by the subjugation of Hayti. In 1511 the island of Cnba was invaded and conquered in the name of the king of Spain. Three years afterward Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien and discovered the great sonth sea, of which such knowledge had been communicated by the natives that it had already been designated on the maps of European geographers. Seven years later Ma

gellan entered it by the straits that bear his name and gave it the name of the "Pacific." In 1519 Cortez landed in Mexico at the head of an army of 950 men, and invaded the ancient kingdom of the Montezumas. Two years suf- ficed for its subjugation. In 1537, Cortez, seeking further conquests to the westward of Mexico, landed at Santa Cruz, near the lower extremity of the peninsula of California. Finding nothing to tempt his cupidity or his chivalry, he soon abandoned the country and returned to Mexico. This was the beginning of discovery by the nations of Europe on the Pacific coast of the American continent. But such had been the unpropitious results of the attempts of Cortez to find tempting food for adventure west and north of Mexico, that it is likely discovery would have stayed its progress in that direction, had not other motives prompted its advance from another quarter. These were the hopes and efforts of European discoverers to find a Northwest passage from the Atlantic Ocean through the American continent to the Indian seas.

Before 1500 one of the adventurous naviga- tors of Portugal, Vasco de Gama, had reached the Indian Ocean by sailing eastward from Lis- bon around the Cape of Good Hope. Gaspar Cortereal, another eminent Portuguese discov- erer, explored the Atlantic coast of North America in 1500, and sailing around Labrador entered the straits which opened westward under the 60th degree of north latitude. Through these he passed into what is now known as Hudson's Bay, and believed that he had en- tered waters which led into the Indian ocean, and had accomplished, by sailing westward

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

from the west coast of Europe, what Vasco de Gama had by sailing eastward, -- the discovery of a passage to the wealth of Asia; so little was then known of the geography of the world. To the straits through which he had passed he gave the name of Anian, and the land south of them he called Labrador.

When Magellan, in 1520, sailed into the Pa- cific through the straits to which his own name was given, and continued his voyage westward until the whole world was circumnavigated, the belief of navigators in the existence of the straits of Anian was greatly strengthened. This arose from their belief that the straits of Ma- gellan were only a narrow passage piercing the heart of the continent where it was much nar- rower than elsewhere; and they supposed the same thing would exist to the north, especially since Cortereal had reported its discovery. For many years the chief efforts of explorers were put forth for its real discovery. The efforts of Spain were mainly directed from the Pacific side of the continent, while England, France, Portugal and Holland made theirs from the eastern. It is not necessary to our history to follow the course and story of these expensive and continued efforts, as they had but a remote bearing on the history of the northwest coast; but this fable of the northwest passage kept up the spirit of discovery for many years, and the search for it was participated in by all the lead- ing maritime nations of the world. The first knowledge of the countries on the Pacific coast was not to come, however, from any passage of the Straits of Anian, but from the spirit of adventure that the conquest of Mexico had kindled in the South.

After the subjugation of Mexico, Cortez be- gan the construction of vessels on the coast of Central America for use on the Pacific. After these vessels had been employed for some time on the lower coasts they were sent directly across the Pacific, but he constructed others in which he directed expeditions along the Mexi- can coasts and in Lower California. He dis- covered the Gulf of California and the Colorado

river. He made an attempt at colonization at Santa Cruz, in Lower California. The first at- tempt to pass around the peninsula of Califor- nia was made in 1539 by Francisco de Ulloa, the energetic and capable assistant of Cortez in all his operations on the west coast of Mexico. He succeeded in reaching the twenty-eighth degree of latitude, but was so baffled by head winds and sickness among his men that he was compelled to return to Mexico.

Don Antonio de Mendoza, a Spanish noble- man of high rank, succeeded Cortez as Viceroy of New Spain. He dispatched an expedition of two small vessels, commanded by Juan Rodri- guez Cabrillo, and dispatched it in 1542 to search for the Straits of Anian, and incidentally to discover any of those civillzed nations that the traditions of the Indians or the imagination of the Caucasians located in the northwest. He followed the coast as far north as thirty- eight degrees, but encountered a violent storm which drove them several degrees backward. He found shelter in a small harbor on the island of San Barnardino, lying near the coast in latitude thirty-four degrees, which he called " Port Possession," and which was the first point on the California coast of which the Spaniards took possession. Here Cabrillo died, in January, 1543, and the command devolved on Bartolome Ferrelo, who again headed the vessels to the northward and voyaged up the coast. He reached, on the 1st of March, a point as high as forty-four degrees, as given by some anthorities, and without doubt should be credited with having first discovered the coast of Oregon, though he made no chart of its out- line, and made no landing upon it. The re- sults of the voyage, and of some expeditions sent inland under Alcaron and Coronado, satis- fied the viceroy that the wealthy nations of the coast and country north of Mexico existed only in Indian fables, and that if any straits of Anian existed they must be far north of the fortieth parallel of latitude, and all effort to ex- plore the country to the northward was aban- doned. But Spain was complete mistress of

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

the Pacific. Her flag dominated that mighty ocean, and her enemies were unable to attack her in that vital source of her wealth and power. But this could not long continue when the rivals and enemies of Spain were such pow- ers as England and France. And, besides, this was the era of the "buccaneers," who roved the seas, even in times of peace, under the privity and encouragement of their sovereigns, and they were not less interested than the naval forces of the government of western Europe to find a way to reach and capture the richly- laden galleons of Spain on their way from the mines of Mexico to the treasuries of Lisbon and Madrid. These also sought the Straits of Anian, but despairing at last of finding them, invaded the Pacific by the dreaded way of Ma- gellan. With their appearance on the Pacific the security of Spanish shipping on the south- ern seas ceased forever.

The man who led this crusade of freebooters against the ships and wealth of Spain on the Pacific was Sir Francis Drake. He was an English seaman of much fame, a daring adven- turer and an expert mariner. With three ves- sels he entered the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan. One was soon wrecked, another returned to England, but with the third he con- tinued up the coast, scattering terror among the Spanish shipping and levying heavy contribu- tions on the defenseless ports. Loaded with plun- der, he continued northward on the same boot- less search for the Straits of Anian that had be- guiled all the navigators of England and Spain so long, and which, of course, returned to him only their disappointment. How far he sailed northward it is hard to determine, some authori- ties placing his highest latitude at 43º, and some at 48°. The English writers claim the latter, and the American the former. Doubt- less the question of title to the country on the ground of discovery, as between Spain and England, in which the United States was in- volved by her purchase of the rights of Spain, accounts for that disagreement. If he reached only the forty-third degree, his discoveries were

anticipated by the Spaniard, Ferrelo, by thirty - five years. If he reached the forty-eighth de- gree, then England's right, by discovery of the coast far north of the month of the Columbia river, was undeniable. The accounts published of this voyage of Drake bear so little evidence of reliability that the fair-minded historian finds it difficult to reach a satisfactory conclusion as to the fact in the case. There is little differ- ence which was the fact, since it will be forever impossible to adjudicate the dispute, and hence the honor of the discovery of the Oregon coast will remain divided between the Spaniard, Ferrelo, and the Englishman, Sir Francis Drake.

In the month of June Drake lay in a harbor of refuge, probably in the small bay north of the bay of San Francisco, now known as Drake's Bay. Following the example of the Spanish navigators, he landed and took possession of the country in the name of Great Britain, giving it the title of " New Albion," as the Spaniards had called the southern point of the coast " New Spain."

Following Drake, and encouraged by his suc- cess, came Thomas Cavendish and other English adventurers, having the same purposes in view as Drake himself, namely, the capture of the richly loaded galleons of Spain, and the discov- ery of the Straits of Anian. Without any reason- able compensation it would greatly lengthen a narrative only collateral to our main design, to follow the story of their depredations or dis- coveries. Besides, there was so much that sub- sequent information has proven to be fiction in the published narratives of these expeditions that the historian is sometimes led to wonder if any part of them, as recorded, is credible. In svine of them places and water passages are minutely described that have long ago been proved to have had no existence. History can- not afford space even to catalogue these roman- ces. Such stories as those of Maldonado and of Juan de Fuca must be classed with these, and thus passed by.

There is really nothing of authenticated dis- covery on the north west coast to relate nntil 1602,

IIISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

when Sebastian Viscaino, under peremptory orders from Philip III, sailed north from Aca- pulco, entering the ports of San Quintin, San Diego and Monterey. Nothing of importance having been added by him to geographical science, he soon after returned to Acapulco. In January, 1603, he again sailed northward. On this voyage he reached and named "Cape Blanco," about the 43º of latitude. The histo- rian of the voyage of the little craft on which he sailed says: " From that point the coast begins to turn to the northwest, and near it was discovered a rapid and abundant river, with ash trees, willows, brambles, and other trees of Cas- tile on its banks." An unsuccessful attempt to enter this river, which was probably the Umpqua, was made, and as a large number of the crew were sick with the scurvy, the commander de- termined to return to Acapulco. He and his pilot, Antonio Flores, both died of scurvy on the way, and were buried in the deep.

Still the Straits of Anian remained the fable for the solution of which the navigators of Europe continued to search on both coasts of America. Gradually, but generally, the belief came to be entertained that these straits could · be found only in a search in Hudson's Bay. To aid in their discovery, in 1699, Charles II, then king of England, granted to a company of his subjects a charter guaranteeing most royal priv- ileges in consideration of their agreement to search for the Straits of Anian. This charter created " The Company of Adventurers of Eng- land Trading into Hudson's Bay." The object expressed in the charter was, "For the dis- covery of a new passage into the South Sea, and for the finding of some trade in furs and other considerable commodities." This is the organ- ization known in history as " The Hudson's Bay Company." As its history, as well as its rela- tions to the story of the Pacific coast, will be continued later in this book, we make only this brief reference to it here, simply to identify it as one of the links in the chain of discovery on the Oregon coast.

It seems strange that from the time of the return of the little vessel of Aguilar from Cape Blanco back to Mexico in 1603, a century and more elasped before the prow of another vessel cleft the waters of the North Pacific. But suddenly interest in these regions revived again. In the north of Europe, Russia rose, by the genius of her enlightened monarch, Peter the Great, from an almost unknown condition to a high rank among the nations of the world. Hc extended the bounds of his empire eastward across Siberia until they reached the borean peninsula of Kamtchatka. Then he sought to carry them still farther eastward until they touched the western confines of the provinees of England, Spain and France, on the American continent. How far that might be he knew not, but his was a mind not to be daunted by difficulties nor distracted by doubts. He ordered vessels to be built at Archangel, on the White Sea, for the purposes of cruising eastward and endeavoring to pass into the Pacific through the Arctic ocean. Before his plans were com- pleted Peter died, and was succeeded on the throne by the Empress Catharine.

Though there was some delay in prosecuting the designs of Peter the Great, as soon as pos- sible, Catharine, whose ability was equal to that of her great husband, began to push them for- ward. In 1728, in accordance with her in- structions, vessels were built on the coast of Kamtchatka, and dispatched in search of the passage supposed to exist between the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Vitns Bebring, a Danish navigator of experience and skill, had been des- ignated by Peter to command the expedition, and his selection was confirmed by Catharine. He sailed in July, and followed the coast north- westerly until he found it bending steadily to the west. He became convinced that he had already entered the Arctic, and was sailing along the northern coast of Asia, having reached the 67º of latitude. Neither going nor returning through the straits did he diseern the west lines of America, as the prevalent cloudy

2.4

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

and foggy weather obscured it. Being unpre- pared to winter in the ice, or to make a long and exposed voyage in the open sea, he returned to the port of his embarkation.

The next year he made another voyage, in which he endeavored to find the coast of America by sailing directly eastward, but battled by con- trary wind was obliged to take refuge in the bay of Okotsk, and abandoned the effort and re- turned to St. Petersburg. Other Russian expe- ditions followed, but without decisive result until in 1732, one of the vessels employed was driven by the winds and currents on the Alaska coast, when it was discovered that but a narrow strait separated North America from Asia. Upon this was bestowed the name of Behring.

Other expeditions from Russia there were, but with little result to geographical knowledge. One in 1741, under Behring, commanding the St. Peter, and Tehirkoff, commanding the St. Panl, came to a most disastrous end; Tchirkoff himself finally returning with but a few of his men, the remainder having been butchered by the savages or linng, or died from the scurvy; and Behring's vessel being wrecked on a little granite island between the Aleutian Archipel- ago and Kamtschatka, and where Behring and many of his men died and were buried. The island is known as " Behring Isle" to this day.

These fugitive efforts of Russia to make dis- coveries on the American continent came to very little, and, as the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury was reached, the geography of the American coast from Behring's straits to the Spanish pos- sessions in the south consisted of mere imagina- tive lines drawn on the charts which navigators had made of seas over which they had never sailed and of lands they had never visited. The fact was that Russia was not a martime na- tion, and she had no seamen of sufficient scien- tific attainments to lead the discoveries which she was in a most favorable situation to prose- cute. Hence, after four official expeditions had been made into these northern seas, and private individnals had been engaged in the fur-trade for a third of a century, the Russian idea of the

seas between northern America and Asia was that they were large seas of islands, of which the largest was Alaska. It was reserved for Captain Cook, an Englishman, and a skillful and scientific navigator, to reveal their error.

Captain James Cook commanded the first English vessel to visit the north Pacific seas. He was already the most renowned navigator of England, if not of the world. He had achieved his great distinction in recent voyages of dis- covery in the South Sea and the Indian Ocean. The desire and purpose of England to plant colonies on the Pacific coast naturally turned the eyes of the Lord of Admiralty to him as the one man whose past success guaranteed brilliant results in the new expedition contem- plated by the British government. Cook did not wait to be invited, but volunteered at once to command the expedition. It consisted of two vessels, the Resolution, in which Cook had already passed around the world, and the Dis- covery, commanded by Captain Charles Clarke. These vessels were well suited to their intended use, and were furnished for it as perfectly as science and experience could provide. Cook's charts, though very erroneous in the light of his own subsequent discoveries, were the most per- fect that geographical knowledge at that day could devise. There was on them a compara- tive blank between latitude 43° and 56°, or be- tween the point reached by the Spanish explora- tions in the south and those of Russia in the north. Conjecture had placed somewhere with- in these limits the Great River, the straits of Fuca and the river of Kings. Cook was instructed very particularly to proseente his researches on the Pacific coast of America within these limits, and especially to do nothing that could be con- strued into any trespass on the assumed rights of Spain or Russia. He was directed to reaclı the coast of New Albion, as the English called California, and not to touch upon any part of the Spanish dominions unless driven to it by necessity, and then to treat the people with " civility and friendship." He was to thor- oughly examine the coast, and with the consent

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.

of the natives to take possession, in the name of the king of Great Britain, of convenient sta- tions in such countries as he might diseover that had not already been discovered or visited by any other European power, and to distribute among the inhabitants such things as would re- main as traces of his having been there, but if he should find the countries so discovered to be uninhabited, he was to take possession of them for his sovereign by setting up proper marks and descriptions as first discoverers and pos- sessors. Thus prepared and commissioned Cap- tain Cook set sail from Plymouth, England, on the twelfth day of July, 1776.

Eight days before, an event had occurred in Philadelphia on the eastern coast of America that had more to do with wresting from Great Britain the ultimate results of Cook's explora- tions, and those of all other Englishmen on the Pacific coast, than all others in history. It was the Declaration of American Independence, by which the new nation, destined to dominate the American continent, was born into history.

Cook sailed for the east, rounded the cape of Good Hope, explored the coasts of Van Die- men's Land and New Zealand, and the Society and Friendly islands. Continuing his eastern course, on the 18th of January, 1778, he dis- covered the Hawaiian group, which he named in honor of Lord Sandwich, the "Sandwich Islands." Remaining here but a short time, he still sailed eastward, and on the 7th of March, 1778, sighted the coast of New Albion, near the forty-fourth parallel in what is now Oregon, near the month of the Umpqua river. Head winds forced him south, but as soon as possible he turned to the north, but sailed so far off shore that he did not again see land un- til he reached the 48° of latitude, when he saw a bold headland which he named " Cape Flattery," because of the encouraging prospects of his expedition. He was directly off the month of the Straits of Fuca, but his eharts misguided him by placing that opening south of the forty-eighth parallel, and he turned south to find it. Disappointed here, he turned again

northward, but lay too far off shore and passed the Straits without observing them, and finally cast anehor in Nootka Sound. From this port he still kept his northward course, and on the 4th of May sighted Mount St. Elias, when he be- gan a most thorough search for the Straits of Anian. His explorations about the extreme northern portion of the American coast, in Behring Straits, and the Asiatic coast on the Arctic side as far as cape North, were full of painstaking fidelity, and he so charted those re- gions that many of the fables of the Russian ex- plorers were entirely disproved. On the 9th of August he reached the extremne northwestern cor- ner of America, and named the point "Capc Prince of Wales." Without attempting any further explorations on the coast of America, he sailed directly to the Sandwich Islands for the winter. Here, on the 16th of February, . 1779, in an encounter with the natives, he was slain. This for a time terminated British dis- coveries on the North-Pacific coast. When the Resolution and Discovery reached England, in October, 1780, she was in the midst of her strife with her American colonies and her two immemorial antagonists and rivals across the channel, and had neither time nor inclination to engage in further geographical or colonial enterprises.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 3

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056