Eastward rolled the North Sea. Down at Hull were heard seamen's yarns to make the blood of a boy jump. It was 1746. The world was ringing with tales of Bering on the Pacific, of a southern continent, which didn't exist, of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company's illimitable domain in the north, of La Verendrye's wonderful discoveries of an almost boundless region westward of New France toward the uncharted Western Sea. In a year and a half, Cook had his fill of shopkeeping. Whether he ran away, or had served his master so well that the latter willingly remitted the three years' articles of apprenticeship, Cook now followed his destiny to the sea. According to the world's standards, the change seemed progress backward. He was articled to a ship-owner of Whitby as a common seaman on a coaler sailing between Newcastle and London. One can see such coalers any day—black as smut, grimed from prow to stern, with workmen almost black shovelling coal or hoisting tackling—pushing in and out among the statelier craft of any seaport. It is this stage in a great man's career which is the test. Is the man sure enough of himself to leave everything behind, and jump over the precipice into the unknown? If ever he wishes to return to what he has left, he will have just the height of this jump to climb back to the old place. The old place is a certainty. The unknown may engulf in failure. He {178} must chance that, and all for the sake of a faith in himself, which has not yet been justified; for the sake of a vague star leading into the misty unknown. He knows that he could have been successful in the old place. He does not know that he may not be a failure in the new place. Art, literature, science, commerce—in all—it is the men and women who have dared to risk being failures that have proved the mainspring of progress. Cook was sure enough of himself to exchange shopkeeper's linen for the coal-heaver's blue jeans, to risk following the star of his destiny to the sea.

Presently, the commonplace, grimy duties which he must fulfil are taking him to Dublin, to Liverpool, to Norway; and by the time he is twenty-two, he knows the Baltic trade well, and has heard all the pros and cons of the furious cackle which the schools have raised over that expedition of Bering's to the west coast of America. By the time he is twenty-four he is a first mate on the coal boats. Comes another vital change! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ports of Europe and England.

Cook took a resolution that would have cost any {179} man but one with absolute singleness of purpose a poignant effort. At the age of twenty-seven, he decided to enter the Royal Navy. Now, in a democratic age, we don't talk about such things; but there are unwritten laws and invisible lines just the same. Standing on the captain's deck of an American warship not long ago, watching the deck hands below putting things shipshape, I asked an officer—"Is there any chance for those men to rise?"

"Yes, some," he answered tentatively, "but then, there is a difference between the men who have been trained for a position, and those who have worked up the line to it." If that difference exists in a democratic country and age, what was it for Cook in a country and at a time when lines of caste were hard and fast drawn? But he entered the navy on the Eagle under Sir Hugh Palliser, who, almost at once, transferred him from the forecastle to the quarterdeck. What was the explanation of such quick recognition? Therein lies the difference between the man who tries and succeeds, and the man who tries and fails. Cook had qualified himself for promotion. He was so fitted for the higher position, that the higher position could not do without him. Whether rocking on the Baltic, or waiting for the stokers to heave out coal at Liverpool, every moment not occupied by seaman's duties, Cook had filled by improving himself, by increasing his usefulness, by sharpening his brain, so that his brain could better direct his hands, by {180} studying mathematics and astronomy and geography and science and navigation. As some one has said—there are lots of people with hands and no brain; and there are lots of people with brains and no hands; but the kind who will command the highest reward for their services to the world are those who have the finest combination of brains and hands.



Four years after Cook had joined the navy, he was master on the Mercury with the fleet before Quebec, making a chart of the St. Lawrence for Wolfe to take the troops up to the Heights of Abraham, piloting the boats to the attack on Montmorency, and conducting the embarkation of the troops, who were to win the famous battle, that changed the face of America.

Now the Royal Society wished to send some one to the South Seas, whose reliability was of such a recognized and steady-going sort, that his conclusions would be accepted by the public. Just twenty years from the time that he had left the shop, Cook was chosen for this important mission. What manner of man was he, who in that time had risen from life in a mud hut to the rank of a commander in the Royal Navy? In manner, he was plain and simple and direct, no flourish, no unnecessary palaver of showy words, not a word he did not mean. In form, he was six feet tall, in perfect proportion, with brown hair and eyes, alertly penetrating, with features sharp rather from habit or thought than from natural shape.

On this mission he left England in 1768, anchored at {181} the Society Islands of the South Seas in the spring of 1769, explored New Zealand in the fall of the same year, rounded Australia in 1770 and returned to England in 1771, the very year Hearne was trying to tramp it overland in search of a Northwest Passage. And he brought back no proof of that vast southern world which geographers had put on their maps. Promptly he was sent out on a second voyage to find or demolish that mythical continent of the southern hemisphere; and he demolished the myth of a southern continent altogether, returning from circumnavigating the globe just at the time when the furor of a Northwest Passage northward of Hudson Bay, northward even of Bering's course on the Pacific, was at its height.

The third voyage was to determine finally the bounds of western America, the possibilities of a passage between Europe and Asia by way of the Pacific. Two ships—the Resolution, four hundred and sixty tons, one hundred and twelve men, which Cook had used before, and the Discovery, three hundred tons, eighty men—were purchased at Hull, the old port of Cook's boyhood dreams. To secure the good will of the crews, two months' wages were paid in advance. Captain Clerke commanded the Discovery; and the two crews numbered men of whom the world was to hear more in connection with the northwest coast of America—a young midshipman, Vancouver, whose doings were yet to checkmate Spain; a young American, corporal {182} of marines, Ledyard, who was to have his brush with Russia; and other ambitious young seamen destined to become famous traders on the west coast of America.

The two ships left England in midsummer of 1776, crossed the equator in September when every man fresh to the episode was caught and ducked overrails in equatorial waters, rounded Good Hope, touched at the Society Islands of the first voyage, and by spring of 1778 had explored and anchored at the Sandwich Islands. Once on the Pacific, Cook mustered his crews and took them into his confidence; he was going to try for that reward of twenty thousand pounds to the crew that discovered a Northeast Passage; and even if he missed the reward, he was going to have a shy at the most northern latitude ever attempted by navigator—89 degrees; would they do it? The crew cheered. Whether they reached 89 degrees or not, they decided to preserve their grog for the intense cold to be encountered in the north; so that the daily allowance was now cut to half.

By March, the ships were off from the Sandwich Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphorescent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: "You are to proceed on as direct a course as you can to the coast of New Albion, endeavoring to fall in with it in latitude 45 degrees north . . . and are strictly enjoined {183} not to touch on any part of the Spanish dominions . . . unless driven by accident . . . and to be very careful not to give any umbrage to the subjects of his Catholic Majesty . . . and if in further progress northward . . . you find any subjects of a European prince . . . you are not to give any cause of offence . . . proceed northward to 65 degrees, carefully search for such inlets as appear pointing to Hudson Bay . . . use your utmost endeavors to pass through." The commission shows that England was unaware Spain had pushed north of 45 degrees, and Russia north of 65 degrees; for Spain jealously kept her explorations secret, and Russia's were not accepted. The commission also offered a reward for any one going within 1 degree of the Pole. It may be added—the offer is still open.

For days after leaving the Sandwich Islands, not a bird was to be seen. That was a bad omen for land. Land must be far, indeed; and Cook began to fear there might be as much ocean in that northern hemisphere as the geographers of Russia and France—who actually tabulated Bering's discoveries as an island—had placed on the maps. But in the first week of March, a sea-gull came swimming over the crest of a wave. Where did she come from? Then an albatross was seen wheeling above the sea. Then, on March 6, two lonely land seals went plying past; and whales were noticed. Surely they were nearing the region that Drake, the English freebooter, had seen and named New Albion two hundred years before. {184} Suddenly, on the morning of March 7, the dim offing ahead showed thin, sharp, clear lines. The lines rose higher as the ship approached. They cut themselves against the sky in the form of mountains and hills with purple mist lying in the valleys. It was the New Albion at latitude 44 degrees 33 minutes, which Drake had discovered. The day was hazy and warm. Cook's crews wondered why Drake had complained of such cold. By night they found out. A roaring hurricane burst from the northern darkness with squalls of hail and snow and sleet, that turned the shore to one long reach of whitened cliffs straight up and down out of the sea. In commemoration, they called the first landfall, Cape Foulweather; and, in spite of the commission to sail north, drove under bare poles before the storm to 43 degrees, naming the two capes passed Perpetua and Gregory. Only by the third week of March had the storm abated enough for them to turn north again.[1]

Now, whether the old Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, lied or dreamed, or only told a yarn of what some Indian had told him, it was along this coast that he had said the straits leading to the east side of America lay; and Cook's two ships hugged the coast as close as they dared for fear of roaring breakers and a landward wind. On March 23 rocks were seen lying off a high point capped with trees, behind which might be a {185} strait; but a gale ashore and a lashing tide thundering over the rocks sent the ships scudding for the offing through fog and rain; and never a glimpse of a passage eastward could the crews obtain. Cook called the delusive point Cape Flattery and added: "It is in this very latitude (48 degrees 15 minutes) that geographers have placed the pretended Straits of Juan de Fuca; but we saw nothing like it; nor is there the least possibility that any such thing ever existed." But Cook was too far out to descry the narrow opening—but thirteen miles wide—of Juan de Fuca, where the steamers of three continents ply to-day; though the strait by no means led to Europe, as geographers thought.

All night a hard gale drove them northward. When the weather cleared, permitting them to approach the coast again, high mountains, covered with snow and forests, jagged through the clouds like tent peaks. Tremendous breakers roared over sunken rocks. Point Breakers, Cook called them. Then the wind suddenly fell; and the ships were becalmed directly opposite the narrow entrance of a two-horned cove sheltered by the mountains. The small boats had all been mustered out to tow the two ships in, when a slight breeze sprang up. The flotilla drifted inland just as three canoes, carved in bizarre shapes of birds' heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third. They came slowly over the water, singing some song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, {186} scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth as glass, the grand tyee, or great chief of the tribes, standing erect shouting a welcome, with long elf-locks streaming down his back. Women and children now appeared in the canoes. That meant peace. The women were chattering like magpies; the men gurgling and spluttering their surprise at the white visitors. For safety's sake the guns of the two ships were pointed ready; but the natives did not know the fear of a gun. It was the end of March when Cook first anchored off what he thought was the mainland of America. It was not mainland, but an island, and the harbor was one to become famous as the rendezvous of Pacific traders—Nootka!

Three armed boats commanded by Mr. King, and one under Cook, at once proceeded from the ships to explore and sound the inlet. The entrance had been between two rocky points four miles apart past a chain of sunken rocks. Except in a northwest corner of the inlet, since known as Snug Cove, the water was too deep for anchorage; so the two ships were moored to trees, the masts unrigged, the iron forge set to work on the shore; and the men began cutting timber for the new masts. And still the tiny specks dancing over the waves carrying canoe loads of savages to the English ships, {187} continued to multiply till the harbor seemed alive with warriors—two thousand at least there must have been by the first week of April after Cook's arrival. Some of the savages wore brightly painted wooden masks as part of their gala attire. Others carried totems—pieces of wood carved in the likeness of bird or beast to typify manitou of family or clan. By way of showing their prowess, some even offered the white men human skulls from which the flesh had not yet been taken. By this Cook knew the people were cannibals. Some were observed to be wearing spoons of European make as ornaments round their necks. What we desire to believe we easily accept. The white men did not ascribe the spoons to traders from New Spain on the south, or the Russian settlements to the north; but thought this place must be within trading distance of Hudson Bay, whence the Indians must have obtained the spoons. And so they cherished the hope of a Northeast Passage from this slim sign. In a few days fifteen hundred beaver and sea-otter had been obtained in trade, sixty-nine sea-otter—each of which was worth at that time one hundred dollars in modern money—for a handful of old nails.

To these deep-sea wanderers of Cook's crews, the harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,—of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,—cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming their spring song through the dark underbrush; sea-mew and Mother Carey's chickens screaming and clacking overhead; the snowy summits red as wine in the sunset glow—all made up an April scene long cherished by these adventurers of the North.

Early one morning in April the men cutting timber inland were startled to notice the underbrush alive with warriors armed. The first fear was of an ambush. Cook ordered the men to an isolated rock ready for defence; but the grand tyee or chief explained by signs that his tribe was only keeping off another tribe that wanted to trade with the white men. The worst trouble was from the inordinate thieving propensities of the natives. Iron, nails, belaying pins, rudders, anchors, bits of sail, a spike that could be pulled from the rotten wood of the outer keel by the teeth of a thief paddling below—anything, everything was snatched by the light-fingered gentry. Nor can we condemn them for it. Their moral standard was the Wolf Code of Existence—which the white man has elaborated in his evolution—to take whatever they had the dexterity and strength to take and to keep. When caught in theft, they did not betray as much sense of guilt as a dog stealing a bone. Why should they? Their {189} code was to take. The chief of the Nootkas presented Cook with a sea-otter cloak. Cook reciprocated with a brass-hilted sword.

By the end of April the ships had been overhauled, and Cook was ready to sail. Porpoise were coursing the sea like greyhounds, and the stormy petrels in a clatter; but Cook was not to be delayed by storm. Barely had the two ships cleared the harbor, when such a squall broke loose, they could do nothing but scud for open sea, turn tails to the wind, and lie helpless as logs, heads south. If it had not been for this storm, Cook would certainly have discovered that Nootka was on an island, not the coast of the mainland; but by the time the weather permitted an approach to land again, Friday, May 1, the ships were abreast that cluster of islands below the snowy cone of Mt. Edgecumbe, Sitka, where Chirikoff's Russians had first put foot on American soil. Cook was now at the northernmost limit of Spanish voyaging.

By the 4th of May Cook had sighted and passed the Fairweather Range, swung round westward on the old course followed by Bering, and passed under the shadow of St. Elias towering through the clouds in a dome of snow. On the 6th the ships were at Kyak, where Bering had anchored, and amid myriad ducks and gulls were approaching a broad inlet northward. Now, just as Bering had missed exploring this part of the coast owing to fog, so Cook had failed to trace that long archipelago of islands from Sitka Sound {190} northward; but here, where the coast trends straight westward, was an opening that roused hopes of a Northeast Passage. The Resolution had sprung a leak; and in the second week of May, the inlet was entered in the hope of a shelter to repair the leak and a way northeast to the Atlantic. Barely had the ships passed up the sound, when they were enshrouded in a fog that wiped out every outline; otherwise, the high coast of glacial palisades—two hundred feet in places and four miles broad—might have been seen landlocked by mountains; but Mr. Gore launched out in a small boat steering north through haze and tide-rip. Twenty natives were seen clad in sea-otter skins, by which—the white men judged—no Russians could have come to this sound; for the Russians would not have permitted the Indians to keep such valuable sea-otter clothing. The glass beads possessed by the natives were supposed to attest proximity to traders of Hudson Bay. With an almost animal innocence of wrong, the Indians tried to steal the small boat of the Discovery, flourishing their spears till the white crew mustered. At another time, when the Discovery lay anchored, few lanterns happened to be on deck. No sailors were visible. It was early in the morning and everybody was asleep, the boat dark. The natives swarmed up the ship's sides like ants invading a sugar canister. Looking down the hatches without seeing any whites, they at once drew their knives and began to plunder. The whites dashed up the hatchway and drove the {191} plunderers over the rails at sword point. East and north the small boats skirted the mist-draped shores, returning at midnight with word the inlet was a closed shore. There was no Northeast Passage. They called the spider-shaped bay Prince William Sound; and at ten in the morning headed out for sea.

Here a fresh disappointment awaited them. The natives of Prince William Sound had resembled the Eskimos of Greenland so much that the explorers were prepared to find themselves at the westward end of the American continent ready to round north into the Atlantic. A long ledge of land projected into the sea. They called this Cape Elizabeth, passed it, noted the reef of sunken rocks lying directly athwart a terrific tidal bore, and behold! not the end of the continent—no, not by a thousand miles—but straight across westward, beneath a smoking volcano that tinged the fog ruby-red, a lofty, naked spur three miles out into the sea, with crest hidden among the clouds and rock-base awash in thundering breakers. This was called Cape Douglas. Between these two capes was a tidal flood of perhaps sixty miles' breadth. Where did it come from? Up went hopes again for the Northeast Passage, and the twenty thousand pounds! Spite of driftwood, and roily waters, and a flood that ran ten miles an hour, and a tidal bore that rose twenty feet, up the passage they tacked, east to west, west to east, plying up half the month of June in rain and sleet, with the heavy pall of black smoke {192} rolling from the volcano left far on the offing! At last the opening was seen to turn abruptly straight east. Out rattled the small boats. Up the muddy waters they ran for nine miles till salt water became fresh water, and the explorers found themselves on a river. In irony, this point was called Turn-Again. The whole bay is now known as Cook's Inlet. Mr. King was sent ashore on the south side of Turn-Again to take possession. Twenty natives in sea-otter skins stood by watching the ceremony of flag unfurled and the land of their fathers being declared the possession of England. These natives were plainly acquainted with the use of iron; but "I will be bold to say," relates Cook, "they do not know the Russians, or they would not be wearing these valuable sea-otter skins."

No Northeast Passage here! So out they ply again for open sea through misty weather; and when it clears, they are in the green treeless region west of Cook's Inlet. Past Kadiak, past Bering's Foggy Island, past the Shumagins where Bering's first sailor to die of scurvy had been buried, past volcanoes throwing up immense quantities of blood-red smoke, past pinnacled rocks, through mists so thick the roar of the breakers is their only guide, they glide, or drift, or move by inches feeling the way cautiously, fearful of wreck.

Toward the end of June a great hollow green swell swings them through the straits past Oonalaska, northward at last! Natives are seen in green trousers {193} and European shirts; natives who take off their hats and make a bow after the pompous fashion of the Russians.

Twice natives bring word to Cook by letter and sign that the Russians of Oonalaska wish to see him. But Captain Cook is not anxious to see the Russians just now. He wants to forestall their explorations northward and take possession of the Polar realm for England. In August they are in Bristol Bay, north of the Aleutians, directly opposite Asia. Here Dr. Anderson, the surgeon, dies of consumption. Not so much fog now. They can follow the mainland. Far ahead there projects straight out in the sea a long spit of land backed by high hills, the westernmost point of North America—Cape Prince of Wales! Bering is vindicated! Just fifty years from Bering's exploration of 1728, the English navigator finds what Bering found: that America and Asia are not united; that no Northeast Passage exists; that no great oceanic body lies north of New Spain; that Alaska—as the Russian maps had it after Bering's death—is not an island.

Wind, rain, roily, shoaly seas breaking clear over the ship across decks drove Cook out from land to deeper water. With an Englishman's thoroughness for doing things and to make deadly sure just how the two continents lay to each other, Cook now scuds across Bering Strait thirty-nine miles to the Chukchee land of Siberia in Asia. How he praises the accuracy of poor {194} Bering's work along this coast: Bering, whose name had been a target for ridicule and contempt from the time of his death; whose death was declared a blunder; whose voyage was considered a failure; whose charts had been rejected and distorted by the learned men of the world.



From the Chukchee villages of Asia, Cook sailed back to the American coast, passing north of Bering Straits directly in mid-channel. It is an odd thing, while very little ice-drift is met in Bering Sea, you have no sooner passed north of the straits than a white world surrounds you. Fog, ice, ice, fog—endlessly, with palisades of ice twelve feet high, east and west, far as the eye can see! The crew amuse themselves alternately gathering driftwood for fuel, and hunting {195} walrus over the ice. It is in the North Pacific that the walrus attains its great size—nine feet in length, broader across its back than any animal known to the civilized world. These piebald yellow monsters lay wallowing in herds of hundreds on the ice-fields. At the edge lay always one on the watch; and no matter how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels were iced like ghost ships. Tack back and forward as they might, no passage opened through the ice. Suddenly Cook found himself in shoal water, on a lee shore, long and low and shelving, with the ice drifting on his ships. He called the place Icy Cape. It was their farthest point north; and the third week of August they were compelled to scud south to escape the ice. Backing away toward Asia, he reached the North Cape there. It was almost September. In accordance with the secret instructions, Cook turned south to winter at the Sandwich Islands, passing Serdze Kamen, where Bering had turned back in 1728, East Cape on the Straits of Bering just opposite the American Prince of Wales, and St. Lawrence islands where the ships anchored.

Norton Sound was explored on the way back; and October saw Cook down at Oonalaska, where Ledyard was sent overland across the island to conduct the {196} Russian traders to the English ships. Three Russians came to visit Cook. One averred that he had been with Bering on the expedition of 1741, and the rough adventurers seemed almost to worship the Dane's memory. Later came Ismyloff, chief factor of the Russian fur posts in Oonalaska, attended by a retinue of thirty native canoes, very suave as to manners, very polished and pompous when he was not too convivial, but very chary of any information to the English, whose charts he examined with keenest interest, giving them to understand that the Empress of Russia had first claim to all those parts of the country, rising, quaffing a glass and bowing profoundly as he mentioned the august name. "Friends and fellow-countrymen glorious," the English were to the smooth-tongued Russian, as they drank each other's health. Learning that Cook was to visit Avacha Bay, Ismyloff proffered a letter of introduction to Major Behm, Russian commander of Kamchatka. Cook thought the letter one of commendation. It turned out otherwise. Fur traders, world over, always resented the coming of the explorer. Ismyloff was neither better nor worse than his kind.[2]

Heavy squalls pursued the ships all the way from Oonalaska, left on October 26, to the Sandwich Islands, reached in the new year 1779. A thousand canoes of enthusiastic natives welcomed Cook back to the sunny islands of the Pacific. Before the explorer {197} could anchor, natives were swimming round the ship like shoals of fish. When Cook landed, the whole population prostrated itself at his feet as if he had been a god. It was a welcome change from the desolate cold of the inhospitable north.

Situated midway in the Pacific, the Sandwich Islands were like an oasis in a watery waste to Cook's mariners. The ships had dropped anchor in the centre of a horn-shaped bay called Karakakooa, in Hawaii, about two miles from horn to horn. On the sandy flats of the north horn was the native village of Kowrowa: amid the cocoanut grove of the other horn, the village of Kakooa, with a well and Morai, or sacred burying-ground, close by. Between the two villages alongshore ran a high ledge of black coral rocks. In all there were, perhaps, four hundred houses in the two villages, with a population of from two to three thousand warriors; but the bay was the rallying place for the entire group of islands; and the islands numbered in all several hundred thousand warriors.

Picture, then, the scene to these wanderers of the northern seas: the long coral reef, wave-washed by bluest of seas; the little village and burying-ground and priests' houses nestling under the cocoanut grove at one end of the semicircular bay, the village where Terreeoboo, king of the island, dwelt on the long sand beach at the other end; and swimming through the water like shoals of fish, climbing over the ships' rigging like monkeys, crowding the decks of the Discovery {198} so that the ship heeled over till young chief Pareea began tossing the intruders by the scuff of the neck back into the sea—hundreds, thousands, of half-naked, tawny-skinned savages welcoming the white men back to the islands discovered by them. Chief among the visitors to the ship was Koah, a little, old, emaciated, shifty-eyed priest with a wry neck and a scaly, leprous skin, who at once led the small boats ashore, driving the throngs back with a magic wand and drawing a mystic circle with his wizard stick round a piece of ground near the Morai, or burying-place, where the white men could erect their tents beside the cocoanut groves. The magic line was called a taboo. Past the tabooed line of the magic wand not a native would dare to go. Here Captain King, assisted by the young midshipman, Vancouver, landed with a guard of eight or ten mariners to overhaul the ships' masts, while the rest of the two crews obtained provisions by trade.

Cook was carried off to the very centre of the Morai—a circular enclosure of solid stone with images and priests' houses at one end, the skulls of slain captives at the other. Here priests and people did the white explorer homage as to a god, sacrificing to him their most sacred animal—a strangled pig.

All went well for the first few days. A white gunner, who died, was buried within the sacred enclosure of the Morai. The natives loaded the white men's boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt {199} sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was drawn up at arms under the cocoanut grove to receive the visitor with fitting honor. When the king learned that Cook was to leave the bay early in February, a royal proclamation gathered presents for the ships; and Cook responded by a public display of fireworks.

Now it is a sad fact that when a highly civilized people meet an uncivilized people, each race celebrates the occasion by appropriating all the evil qualities of the other. Vices, not virtues, are the first to fraternize. It was as unfair of Cook's crew to judge the islanders by the rabble swarming out to steal from the ships, as it would be for a newcomer to judge the people of New York by the pickpockets and under-world of the water front. And it must not be forgotten that the very quality that had made Cook successful—the quality to dare—was a danger to him here. The natives did not violate the sacred taboo, which the priest had drawn round the white men's quarters of the grove. It was the white men who violated it by going outside the limit; and the conduct of the white sailors for the sixteen days in port was neither better nor worse than the conduct of sailors to-day who go on a wild spree with the lowest elements of the harbor. {200} The savages were quick to find out that the white gods were after all only men. The true story of what happened could hardly be written by Captain King, who finished Cook's journal; though one can read between the lines King's fear of his commander's rashness. The facts of the case are given by the young American, John Ledyard, of Connecticut, who was corporal of marines and in the very thick of the fight.

At the end of two weeks the white seamen were, perhaps, satiated of their own vices, or suffering from the sore head that results from prolonged spreeing. At all events the thieving, which had been condoned at first, was now punished by soundly flogging the natives. The old king courteously hinted it was time for the white men to go. The mate, who was loading masts and rudder back on board the Resolution, asked the savages to give him a hand. The islanders had lost respect for the white men of such flagrant vices. They pretended to give a helping hand, but only jostled the mate about in the crowd. The Englishman lost his temper, struck out, and blustered. The shore rang with the shrill laughter of the throngs. In vain the chiefs of authority interposed. The commands to help the white men were answered by showers of stones directly inside the taboo. Ledyard was ordered out with a guard of sailors to protect the white men loading the Resolution. The guard was pelted black and blue. "There was nothing to do," relates Ledyard, "but move to new lands where our vices {201} were not known." At last all was in readiness to sail—one thing alone lacking—wood; and the white men dare not go inland for the needed wood.

So far the entire blame rested on the sailors. Now Cook committed his cardinal error. With that very dare and quickness to utilize every available means to an end—whether the end justified the means—Cook ordered his men ashore to seize the rail fence round the top of the stone burying-ground—the sacred Morai—as fuel for his ships. Out rushed the priests from the enclosure in dire distress. Was this their reward for protecting Cook with the wand of the sacred taboo? Two hatchets were offered the leading priest as pay. He spurned them as too loathsome to be touched. Leading the way, Cook ordered his men to break the fence down, and proffered three hatchets, thrusting them into the folds of the priest's garment. Pale and quivering with rage, the priest bade a slave remove the profaning iron. Down tumbled the fence! Down the images on poles! Down the skulls of the dead sacred to the savage as the sepulchre to the white man! It may be said to the credit of the crew, that the men were thoroughly frightened at what they were ordered to do; but they were not too frightened to carry away the images as relics. Cook alone was blind to risk. As if to add the last straw to the Hawaiians' endurance, when the ships unmoored and sailed out from the bay, where but two weeks before they had been so royally welcomed, they carried {202} eloping wives and children from the lower classes of the two villages.

It was one of the cases where retribution came so swift it was like a living Nemesis. If the weather had continued fair, doubtless wives and children would have been dumped off at some near harbor, the incident considered a joke, and the Englishmen gone merrily on their way; but a violent gale arose. Women and children were seized with a seasickness that was no joke. The decks resounded with such wails that Cook had to lie to in the storm, put off the pinnace, and send the visitors ashore. What sort of a tale they carried back, we may guess. Meanwhile the storm had snapped the foremast of the Resolution. As if rushing on his ruin, Cook steered back for the bay and anchored midway between the two villages. Again the tents were pitched beside the Morai under the cocoanut groves. Again the wand was drawn round the tenting place; but the white men had taught the savages that the taboo was no longer sacred. Where thousands had welcomed the ships before, not a soul now appeared. Not a canoe cut the waters. Not a voice broke the silence of the bay.

The sailors were sour; Cook, angry. When the men rowed to the villages for fresh provisions, they were pelted with stones. When at night-time the savages came to the ships with fresh food, they asked higher prices and would take only daggers and knives in pay. Only by firing its great guns could the {203} Discovery prevent forcible theft by the savages offering provisions; and in the scuffle of pursuit after one thief, Pareea—a chief most friendly to the whites—was knocked down by a white man's oar. "I am afraid," remarked Cook, "these people will compel me to use violent measures." As if to test the mettle of the tacit threat, Sunday, daybreak, February 14, revealed that the large rowboat of the Discovery had been stolen.

When Captain King, who had charge of the guard repairing the masts over under the cocoanut grove came on board Sunday morning, he found Cook loading his gun, with a line of soldiers drawn up to go ashore in order to allure the ruler of the islands on board, and hold him as hostage for the restitution of the lost boat. Clerke, of the Discovery, was too far gone in consumption to take any part. Cook led the way on the pinnace with Ledyard and six marines. Captain King followed in the launch with as many more. All the other small boats of the two ships were strung across the harbor from Kakooa, where the grove was, to Kowrowa, where the king dwelt, with orders to fire on any canoe trying to escape.

Before the fearless leader, the savages prostrated themselves in the streets. Cook strode like a conqueror straight to the door of the king's abode. It was about nine in the morning. Old Terreeoboo—peace lover and lazy—was just awake and only too willing to go aboard with Cook as the easiest way out {204} of the trouble about the stolen boat. But just here the high-handedness of Cook frustrated itself. That line of small boats stretched across the harbor began firing at an escaping canoe. A favorite chief was killed. Word of the killing came as the old king was at the water's edge to follow Cook; and a wife caught him by the arm to drag him back. Suddenly a throng of a thousand surrounded the white men. Some one stabs at Phillips of the marines. Phillips's musket comes down butt-end on the head of the assailant. A spear is thrust in Cook's very face. He fires blank shot. The harmlessness of the shot only emboldens the savages. Women are seen hurrying off to the hills; men don their war mats. There is a rush of the white men to get positions along the water edge free for striking room; of the savages to prevent the whites' escape. A stone hits Cook. "What man did that?" thunders Cook; and he shoots the culprit dead. Then the men in the boats lose their heads, and are pouring volleys of musketry into the crowds.

"It is hopeless," mutters Cook to Phillips; but amid a shower of stones above the whooping of the savages, he turns with his back to the crowd, and shouts for the two small boats to cease firing and pull in for the marines. His caution came too late.

His back is to his assailants. An arm reached out—a hand with a dagger; and the dagger rips quick as a flash under Cook's shoulder-blade. He fell without a groan, face in the water, and was hacked to pieces {205} before the eyes of his men. Four marines had already fallen. Phillips and Ledyard and the rest jumped into the sea and swam for their lives. The small boats were twenty yards out. Scarcely was Phillips in the nearest, when a wounded sailor, swimming for refuge, fainted and sank to the bottom. Though half stunned from a stone blow on his head and bleeding from a stab in the back, Phillips leaped to the rescue, dived to bottom, caught the exhausted sailor by the hair of the head and so snatched him into the boat. The dead and the arms of the fugitives had been deserted in the wild scramble for life.



Meanwhile the masts of the Resolution, guarded by {206} only six marines, were exposed to the warriors of the other village at the cocoanut grove. Protected by the guns of the two ships under the direction of Clerke, who now became commander, masts and men were got aboard by noon. At four that afternoon, Captain King rowed toward shore for Cook's body. He was met by the little leprous priest Koah, swimming halfway out. Though tears of sorrow were in Koah's treacherous red-rimmed eyes as he begged that Clerke and King might come ashore to parley. King judged it prudent to hold tightly on the priest's spear handle while the two embraced.

Night after night for a week, the conch-shells blew their challenge of defiance to the white men. Fires rallying to war danced on the hillsides. Howls and shouts of derision echoed from the shore. The stealthy paddle of treacherous spies could be heard through the dark under the keel of the white men's ships. Cook's clothing, sword, hat, were waved in scorn under the sailors' faces. The women had hurried to the hills. The old king was hidden in a cave, where he could be reached only by a rope ladder; and emissary after emissary tried to lure the whites ashore. One pitch-dark night, paddles were heard under the keels. The sentinels fired; but by lantern light two terrified faces appeared above the rail of the Resolution. Two frightened, trembling savages crawled over the deck, prostrated themselves at Clerke's feet, and slowly unrolled a small wrapping of cloth that revealed a small {207} piece of human flesh—the remains of Cook. Dead silence fell on the horrified crew. Then Clerke's stern answer was that unless the bones of Cook were brought to the ships, both native villages would be destroyed. The two savages were former friends of Cook's and warned the whites not to be allured on land, nor to trust Koah, the leper priest, on the ships.

Again the conch-shells blew their challenge all night through the darkness. Again the war fires danced; but next morning the guns of the Discovery were trained on Koah, when he tried to come on board. That day sailors were landed for water and set fire to the village of the cocoanut groves to drive assailants back. How quickly human nature may revert to the beast type! When the white sailors returned from this skirmish, they carried back to the ships with them, the heads of two Hawaiians they had slain. By Saturday, the 20th, masts were in place and the boats ready to sail. Between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, a long procession of people was seen filing slowly down the hills preceded by drummers and a white flag. Word was signalled that Cook's bones were on shore to be delivered. Clerke put out in a small boat to receive the dead commander's remains—from which all flesh had been burned. On Sunday, the 21st, the entire bay was tabooed. Not a native came out of the houses. Silence lay over the waters. The funeral service was read on board the Resolution, and the coffin committed to the deep.

{208} A curious reception awaited the ships at Avacha Bay, Kamchatka, whence they now sailed. Ismyloff's letter commending the explorers to the governor of Avacha Bay brought thirty Cossack soldiers floundering through the shore ice of Petropaulovsk under the protection of pointed cannon. Ismyloff, with fur trader's jealousy of intrusion, had warned the Russian commander that the English ships were pirates like Benyowsky, the Polish exile, who had lately sacked the garrisons of Kamchatka, stolen the ships, and sailed to America. However, when Cook's letters were carried overland to Bolcheresk, to Major Behm, the commander, all went well. The little log-thatched fort with its windows of talc opened wide doors to the far-travelled English. The Russian ladies of the fort donned their China silks. The samovars were set singing. English sailors gave presents of their grog to the Russians. Russian Cossacks presented their tobacco to the English, adding three such cheers as only Cossacks can give and a farewell song.

In 1779 Clerke made one more attempt to pass through the northern ice-fields from Pacific to Atlantic; but he accomplished nothing but to go over the ground explored the year before under Cook. On the 5th of July at ten P.M. in the lingering sunlight of northern latitudes, just as the boats were halfway through the Straits of Bering, the fog lifted, and for the first time in history—as far as known—the westernmost part of America, Cape Prince of Wales, and the {209} eastern-most part of Asia, East Cape, were simultaneously seen by white men.

Finding it impossible to advance eastward, Clerke decided there was no Northeast Passage by way of the Pacific to the Atlantic; and on the 21st of July, to the cheers of his sailors, announced that the ships would turn back for England.[3]

Poor Clerke died of consumption on the way, August 22, 1779, only thirty-eight years of age, and was buried at Petropaulovsk beside La Croyere de l'Isle, who perished on the Bering expedition. The boats did not reach England till October of 1780. They had not won the reward of twenty thousand pounds; but they had charted a strange coast for a distance of three thousand five hundred miles, and paved the way for the vast commerce that now plies between Occident and Orient.[4]



[1] The question may occur, why in the account of Cook's and Bering's voyage, the latitude is not oftener given. The answer is, the latitudes as given by Cook and Bering vary so much from the modern, it would only confuse the reader trying to follow a modern map.

[2] This is the Ismyloff who was marooned by Benyowsky.

[3] The authority for Cook's adventures is, of course, his own journal, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, London, 1784, supplemented by the letters and journals of men who were with him, like Ledyard, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and others.

[4] In reiterating the impossibility of finding a passage from ocean to ocean, either northeast or northwest, no disparagement is cast on such feats as that of Nordenskjoeld along the north of Asia, in the Vega in 1882.

By "passage" is meant a waterway practicable for ocean vessels, not for the ocean freak of a specially constructed Arctic vessel that dodges for a year or more among the ice-floes in an endeavor to pass from Atlantic to Pacific, or vice versa.



{210}

CHAPTER VIII

1785-1792

ROBERT GRAY, THE AMERICAN DISCOVERER OF THE COLUMBIA

Boston Merchants, inspired by Cook's Voyages, outfit two Vessels under Kendrick and Gray for Discovery and Trade on the Pacific—Adventures of the First Ship to carry the American Flag around the World—Gray attacked by Indians at Tillamook Bay—His Discovery of the Columbia River on the Second Voyage—Fort Defence and the First American Ship built on the Pacific

It is an odd thing that wherever French or British fur traders went to a new territory, they found the Indians referred to American traders, not as "Americans," but "Bostons" or "Bostonnais." The reason was plain. Boston merchants won a reputation as first to act. It was they who began a certain memorable "Boston Tea Party"; and before the rest of the world had recovered the shock of that event, these same merchants were planning to capture the trade of the Pacific Ocean, get possession of all the Pacific coast not already preempted by Spain, Russia, or England, and push American commerce across the Pacific to Asia.

{211} What with slow printing-presses and slow travel, the account of Cook's voyages on the Pacific did not become generally known in the United States till 1785 or 1786. Sitting round the library of Dr. Bulfinch's residence on Bowdoin Square in Boston one night in 1787, were half a dozen adventurous spirits for whom Cook's account of the fur trade on the Pacific had an irresistible fascination. There was the doctor himself. There was his son, Charles, of Harvard, just back from Europe and destined to become famous as an architect. There was Joseph Barrell, a prosperous merchant. There was John Derby, a shipmaster of Salem, a young man still, but who, nevertheless, had carried news of Lexington to England. Captain Crowell Hatch of Cambridge, Samuel Brown, a trader of Boston, and John Marden Pintard of the New York firm of Lewis Pintard Company were also of the little coterie.



If Captain Cook's crew had sold one-third of a water-rotted cargo of otter furs in China for ten thousand dollars, why, these Boston men asked themselves, could not ships fitted expressly for the fur trade capture a fortune in trade on that unoccupied strip of coast between Russian Alaska, on the north, and New Spain, on the south?

"There is a rich harvest to be reaped by those who are on the ground first out there," remarked Joseph Barrell.

Then the thing was to be on the ground first—that {212} was the unanimous decision of the shrewd-headed men gathered in Bulfinch's study.



The sequence was that Charles Bulfinch and the other five at once formed a partnership with a capital of fifty thousand dollars, divided into fourteen shares, for trade on the Pacific. This was ten years before Lewis and Clark reached the Columbia, almost twenty years before Astor had thought of his Pacific Company. The Columbia, a full-rigged two-decker, two hundred and twelve tons and eighty-three feet long, mounting {213} ten guns, which had been built fourteen years before on Hobart's Landing, North River, was immediately purchased. But a smaller ship to cruise about inland waters and collect furs was also needed; and for this purpose the partners bought the Lady Washington, a little sloop of ninety tons. Captain John Kendrick of the merchant marine was chosen to command the Columbia, Robert Gray, a native of Rhode Island, who had served in the revolutionary navy, a friend of Kendrick's, to be master of the Lady Washington. Kendrick was of middle age, cautious almost to indecision; but Gray was younger with the daring characteristic of youth.

In order to insure a good reception for the ships, letters were obtained from the federal government to foreign powers. Massachusetts furnished passports; and the Spanish minister to the United States gave letters to the viceroy of New Spain. Just how the information of Boston plans to intrude on the Pacific coast was received by New Spain may be judged by the confidential commands at once issued from Santa Barbara to the Spanish officer at San Francisco: "Whenever there may arrive at the Port of San Francisco, a ship named the Columbia said to belong to General Wanghington (Washington) of the American States, under command of John Kendrick which sailed from Boston in September 1787 bound on a voyage of Discovery and of Examination of the Russian Establishments on the Northern Coast of this Peninsula, you {214} will cause said vessel to be secured together with her officers and crew."

Orders were also given Kendrick and Gray to avoid offence to any foreign power, to treat the natives with kindness and Christianity, to obtain a cargo of furs on the American coast, to proceed with the same to China to be exchanged for a cargo of tea, and to return to Boston with the tea. The holds of the vessels were then stowed with every trinket that could appeal to the savage heart, beads, brass buttons, ear-rings, calico, tin mirrors, blankets, hunting-knives, copper kettles, iron chisels, snuff, tobacco. The crews were made up of the very best class of self-respecting sea-faring men. Woodruff, Kendrick's first mate, had been with Cook. Joseph Ingraham, the second mate, rose to become a captain. Robert Haswell, the third mate, was the son of a British naval officer. Richard Howe went as accountant; Dr. Roberts, as surgeon; Nutting, formerly a teacher, as astronomer; and Treat, as fur trader. Davis Coolidge was the first mate under Gray on the Lady Washington.

Some heroes blunder into glory. These didn't. They deliberately set out with the full glory of their venture in view. Whatever the profit and loss account might show when they came back, they were well aware that they were attempting the very biggest and most venturesome thing the newly federated states had essayed in the way of exploration and trade. To {215} commemorate the event, Joseph Barrell had medals struck in bronze and silver showing the two vessels on one side, the names of the outfitters on the other. All Saturday afternoon sailors and officers came trundling down to the wharf, carpet bags and seamen's chests in tow, to be rowed out where the Columbia and Lady Washington lay at anchor. Boston was a Sabbath-observing city in those days; but even Boston could not keep away from the two ships heaving to the tide, which for the first time in American history were to sail around an unknown world. All Saturday night and Sunday morning the sailors scoured the decks and put berths shipshape; and all Sunday afternoon the visitors thronged the decks. By night outfitters and relatives were still on board. The medals of commemoration were handed round. Health and good luck and God speed were drunk unto the heel taps. Songs resounded over the festive board. It was all "mirth and glee" writes one of the men on {216} board. But by daybreak the ships had slipped cables. The tide, that runs from round the underworld, raced bounding to meet them. A last dip of land behind; and on Monday, October 1, 1787, the ships' prows were cleaving the waters of their fate.



The course lay from Boston to Cape Verde Islands, from Verde Islands to the Falklands north of Cape Horn, round Cape Horn, up the west coast of South America, touching at Masafuera and Juan Fernandez, and thence, without pause, to the west coast of North America. At Cape Verde, Gray hired a valet, a colored boy, Marcus Lopez, destined to play an important part later. Crossing the equator, the sailors became hilarious, playing the usual pranks of ducking the men fresh to equatorial waters. So long did the ships rest at the Verde Islands, taking in fresh provisions, that it was January before the Falkland Islands were reached. Here Kendrick's caution became almost fear. He was averse to rounding the stormy Horn in winter. Roberts, the surgeon, and Woodruff, who had been with Cook, had become disgusted with Kendrick's indecision at Cape Verde, and left, presumably taking passage back on some foreign cruiser. Haswell, then, went over as first mate to Gray. Mountain seas and smashing gales assailed the ships from the time they headed for the Horn in April of 1788. The Columbia was tossed clear up on her beam ends, and sea after sea crashed over the little {217} Lady Washington, drenching everything below decks like soap-suds in a rickety tub. Then came a hurricane of cold winds coating the ship in ice like glass, till the yard-arms looked like ghosts. Between scurvy and cold, there was not a sailor fit to man the decks. Somewhere down at 57 degrees south, westward of the Horn, the smashing seas and driving winds separated the two ships; but as they headed north, bright skies and warm winds welcomed them to the Pacific. At Masafuera, off Chile, the ships would have landed for fresh water; but a tremendous backwash of surf forewarned reefs; and the Lady Washington stretched her sails for the welcome warm winds, and tacked with all speed to the north. A few weeks later, Kendrick was compelled to put in for Juan Fernandez to repair the Columbia and rest his scurvy-stricken crew. They were given all aid by the governor of the island, who was afterward reprimanded by the viceroy of Chile and degraded from office for helping these invaders of the South Seas.

Meantime the little sloop, guided by the masterful and enthusiastic Gray, showed her heels to the sea. Soon a world of deep-sea, tropical wonders was about the American adventurers. The slime of medusa lights lined the long foam trail of the Lady Washington each night. Dolphins raced the ship, herd upon herd, their silver-white bodies aglisten in the sun. Schools of spermaceti-whales to the number of twenty at a time gambolled lazily around the prow. Stormy petrels, {218} flying-fish, sea-lions, began to be seen as the boat passed north of the seas bordering New Spain. Gentle winds and clear sunlight favored the ship all June. The long, hard voyage began to be a summer holiday on warm, silver seas. The Lady Washington headed inland, or where land should be, where Francis Drake two centuries before had reported that he had found New Albion. On August 2, somewhere near what is now Cape Mendocino, daylight revealed a rim of green forested hills above the silver sea. It was New Albion, north of New Spain, the strip of coast they had come round the world to find. Birds in myriads on myriads screamed the joy that the crew felt over their find; but a frothy ripple told of reefs; and the Lady Washington coasted parallel with the shore-line northward. On August 4, while the surf still broke with too great violence for a landing, a tiny speck was seen dancing over the waves like a bird. As the distance lessened, the speck grew and resolved itself to a dugout, or long canoe, carved with bizarre design stem and stern, painted gayly on the keel, carrying ten Indians, who blew birds' down of friendship in midair, threw open their arms without weapons, and made every sign of friendship. Captain Gray tossed them presents over the deck rail; but the whistle of a gale through the riggings warned to keep off the rock shore; and the sloop's prow cut waves for the offing. All night camp-fires and columns of smoke could be seen on shore, showing that the coast was inhabited. Under {219} clouds of sail, the sloop beat north for ten days, passing many savages, some of whom held up sea-otter to trade, others running along the shore brandishing their spears and shouting their war-cry. Two or three at a time were admitted on board to trade; but they evinced such treacherous distrust, holding knives ready to strike in their right hand, that Gray was cautious.

During the adverse wind they had passed one opening on the coast that resembled the entrance to a river. Was this the fabled river of the West, that Indians said ran to the setting sun? Away up in the Athabasca Country of Canadian wilds was another man, Alexander Mackenzie, setting to himself that same task of finding the great river of the West. Besides, in 1775, Heceta, the Spanish navigator from Monterey, had drifted close to this coast with a crew so stricken with scurvy not a man could hoist anchor or reef sails. Heceta thought he saw the entrance to a river; but was unable to come within twenty miles of the opening to verify his supposition. And now Gray's crew were on the watch for that supposed river; but more mundane things than glory had become pressing needs. Water was needed for drinking. The ship was out of firewood. The live stock must have hay; and in the crew of twelve, three-quarters were ill of the scurvy. These men must be taken ashore. Somewhere near what is now Cape Lookout, or Tillamook Bay, the rowboat was launched to sound, safe anchorage found, and the Lady Washington towed in harbor.

{220} The Lady Washington had anchored about half a mile from shore, but the curiously carved canoes came dancing over the waves in myriads. Gray noticed the natives were all armed with spears and knives, but they evinced great friendliness, bringing the crew baskets of berries and boiled crabs and salmon, in exchange for brass buttons. They had anchored at ten on the night of August 14, and by the afternoon of the 15th the Indians were about the sloop in great numbers, trading otter skins for knives, axes, and other arms—which, in itself, ought to have put the crew on guard. When the white men went ashore for wood and water, the Indians stood silently by, weapons in hand, but offered no hostility. On the third day in harbor an old chief came on board followed by a great number of warriors, all armed. Gray kept careful guard, and the old Indian departed in possession of the stimulating fact that only a dozen hands manned the Lady Washington. Waiting for the tide the next afternoon, Haswell and Coolidge, the two mates, were digging clams on shore. Lopez, the black man, and seven of the crew were gathering grass for the stock. Only three men remained on the sloop with Captain Gray. Only two muskets and three or four cutlasses had been brought ashore. Haswell and Coolidge had their belt pistols and swords. The two mates approached the native village. The Indians began tossing spears, as Haswell thought, to amuse their visitors. That failing to inspire these white men, {221} rash as children, with fear, the Indians formed a ring, clubbed down their weapons in pantomime, and executed all the significant passes of the famous war-dance. "It chilled my veins," says Haswell; and the two mates had gone back to their clam digging, when there was a loud, angry shout. Glancing just where the rowboat lay rocking abreast the hay cutters, Haswell saw an Indian snatch at the cutlass of Lopez, the black, who had carelessly stuck it in the sand. With a wild halloo, the thief dashed for the woods, the black in pursuit, mad as a hornet.

Haswell went straight to the chief and offered a reward for the return of the sword, or the black man. The old chief taciturnly signalled for Haswell to do his own rescuing.

Theft and flight had both been part of a design to scatter the white men. "They see we are ill armed," remarked Haswell to the other. Bidding the boat row abreast with six of the hay cutters, the two mates and a third man ran along the beach in the direction Lopez had disappeared. A sudden turn into a grove of trees showed Lopez squirming mid a group of Indians, holding the thief by the neck and shouting for "help! help!" No sooner had the three whites come on the scene, than the Indians plunged their knives in the boy's back. He stumbled, rose, staggered forward, then fell pierced by a flight of barbed arrows. Haswell had only time to see the hostiles fall on his body like a pack of wolves on prey, when more Indians {222} emerged from the rear, and the whites were between two war parties under a shower of spears. A wild dash was made to head the fugitives off from shore. Haswell and Coolidge turned, pistols in hand, while the rowboat drew in. Another flight of arrows, when the mates let go a charge of pistol shot that dropped the foremost three Indians. Shouting for the rowers to fire, Haswell, Coolidge, and the sailor plunged into the water. To make matters worse, the sailor fainted from loss of blood, and the pursuers threw themselves into the water with a whoop. Hauling the wounded man in the boat, the whites rowed for dear life. The Indians then launched their canoes to pursue, but by this time Gray had the cannon of the Lady Washington trained ashore, and three shots drove the hostiles scampering. For two days tide and wind and a thundering surf imprisoned Gray in Murderers' Harbor, where he had hoped to find the River of the West, but met only danger. All night the savages kept up their howling; but on the third day the wind veered. All sails set, the sloop scudded for the offing, glad to keep some distance between herself and such a dangerous coast.

The advantage of a small boat now became apparent. In the same quarter, Cook was compelled to keep out from the coast, and so reported there were no Straits of Fuca. By August 21 the sloop was again close enough to the rocky shore to sight the snowy, opal {223} ranges of the Olympus Mountains. By August 26 they had passed the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery, and the mate records; "I am of opinion that the Straits of Fuca exist; for in the very latitude they are said to lie, the coast takes a bend, probably the entrance."



By September, after frequent stops to trade with the Indians, they were well abreast of Nootka, where Cook had been ten years before. A terrible ground-swell of surf and back-wash raged over projecting reefs. The Indians, here, knew English words enough to tell Gray that Nootka lay farther east, and that a Captain Meares was there with two vessels. A strange sail appeared inside the harbor. Gray thought it was the belated Columbia under Kendrick; but a rowboat came out bearing Captain Meares himself, who breakfasted with the Americans on September 17, and had his long-boats tow the Lady Washington inside Nootka, where Gray was surprised to see two English snows under Portuguese colors, with a cannon-mounted garrison on shore, and a schooner of thirty tons, the Northwest-America, all ready to be launched. This was the first ship built on the northwest coast. Gray himself later built the second. Amid salvos of cannon from the Lady Washington, the new fur vessel was launched from her skids; and in her honor September 19 was observed as a holiday, Meares and Douglas, the two English captains, entertaining Gray and his officers. Meares had come from China in {224} January, and during the summer had been up the Straits of Fuca, where another English captain, Barclay, had preceded him. Then Meares had gone south past Flattery, seeking in vain for the River of the West. Gales and breakers had driven him off the coast, and the very headland which hid the mouth of the Columbia, he had named Cape Disappointment, because he was so sure—in his own words—"that the river on the Spanish charts did not exist." He had also been down the coast to that Tillamook, or Cape Meares, where Gray's valet had been murdered. This was in July, a month before the assault on Gray; and if Haswell's report of Meares's cruelty be accepted—taking furs by force of arms—that may have explained the hostility to the Americans. Meares was short of provisions to go to China, and Gray supplied them. In return Meares set his workmen to help clean the keel of the Lady Washington from barnacles; but the Englishman was a true fur trader to the core. In after-dinner talks, on the day of the launch, he tried to frighten the Americans away from the coast. Not fifty skins in a year were to be had, he said. Only the palisades and cannon protected him from the Indians, of whom there were more than two thousand hostiles at Nootka, he reported. They could have his fort for firewood after he left. He had purchased the right to build it from the Indians. (Whether he acknowledged that he paid the Indians only two old pistols for this privilege, is not recorded.) At all events, it {225} would not be worth while for the Americans to remain on the coast. The Americans listened and smiled. Meares offered to carry any mail to China, and on the 2d was towed out of port by Gray and the other English captain, Douglas; but what was Gray's astonishment to receive the packet of mail back from Douglas. Meares had only pretended to carry it out in order that none of his crew might be bribed to take it, and then had sent it back by his partner, Douglas—true fur trader in checkmating the moves of rivals. Later on, when Meares's men were in desperate straits in this same port, they wondered that the Americans stood apart from the quarrel, if not actually siding with Spain.

On September 23 appeared a strange sail on the offing—the Columbia, under Kendrick, sails down and draggled, spars storm-torn, two men dead of scurvy, and the crew all ill.

October 1 celebrated a grand anniversary of the departure from Boston the previous year. At precisely midday the Columbia boomed out thirteen guns. The sloop set the echoes rocketing with another thirteen. Douglas's ship roared out a salute of seven cannon shots, the fort on land six more, and the day was given up to hilarity, all hands dining on board the Columbia with such wild fowl as the best game woods in the world afforded, and copious supply of Spanish wines. Toasts were drunk to the first United States ship on the Pacific coast of America. On October 26 {226} Douglas's ship and the fur trader, Northwest-America, were towed out, bound for the Sandwich Islands, and the Americans were left alone on the northwest coast, the fort having been demolished, and the logs turned over to Kendrick for firewood.



The winter of 1788-1789 passed uneventfully except that the English were no sooner out of the harbor, than the Indians, who had kept askance of the Americans, came in flocks to trade. Inasmuch as Cook's name is a household word, world over, for what he did on the Pacific coast, and Gray's name barely known outside the city of Boston and the state of {227} Oregon, it is well to follow Gray's movements on the Lady Washington. March found him trading south of Nootka at Clayoquot, named Hancock, after the governor of Massachusetts. April saw him fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca, which Cook had said did not exist. Then he headed north again, touching at Nootka, where he found Douglas, the Englishman, had come back from the Sandwich Islands with the two ships. Passing out of Nootka at four in the afternoon of May 1, he met a stately ship, all sails set, twenty guns pointed, under Spanish colors, gliding into the harbor. It was the flag-ship of Don Joseph Martinez, sent out to Bering Sea on a voyage of discovery, with a consort, and now entering Nootka to take possession in the name of Spain. Martinez examined Gray's passports, learned that the Americans had no thought of laying claim to Nootka and, finding out about Douglas's ship inside the harbor, seemed to conclude that it would be wise to make friends of the Americans; and he presented Gray with wines, brandy, hams, and spices.

"She will make a good prize," was his sententious remark to Gray about the English ship.

Rounding northward, Gray met the companion ship of the Spanish commander. It will be remembered Cook missed proving that the west coast was a chain of islands. Since Cook's time, Barclay, an Englishman, and Meares had been in the Straits of Fuca. Dixon had discovered Queen Charlotte Island; but {228} the cruising of the little sloop, Lady Washington, covered a greater area than Meares's, Barclay's and Dixon's ships together. First it rounded the north end of Vancouver, proving this was island, not continent. These northern waters Gray called Derby Sound, after the outfitter. He then passed up between Queen Charlotte Island and the continent for two hundred miles, calling this island Washington. It was northward of Portland Canal, somewhere near what is now Wrangel, that the brave little sloop was caught in a terrific gale that raged over her for two hours, damaging masts and timbers so that Gray was compelled to turn back from what he called Distress Cove, for repairs at Nootka. At one point off Prince of Wales Island, the Indians willingly traded two hundred otter skins, worth eight thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel.

In the second week of June the sloop was back at Nootka, where Gray was not a little surprised to find the Spanish had erected a fort on Hog Island, seized Douglas's vessel, and only released her on condition that the little fur trader Northwest-America should become Spanish property on entering Nootka.

Gray and Kendrick now exchanged ships, Gray, who had proved himself the swifter navigator, going on the Columbia, taking Haswell with him as mate. In return for one hundred otter skins, Gray was to carry the captured crew of the Northwest-America to China for the Spaniards. On July 30, 1789, he left Vancouver Island. Stop was made at Hawaii for {229} provisions, and Atto, the son of a chief, boarded the Columbia to visit America. On December 6 the Columbia delivered her cargo of furs to Shaw & Randall of Canton, receiving in exchange tea for Samuel Parkman, of Boston. It was February, 1790, before the Columbia was ready to sail for Boston, and dropping down the river she passed the Lady Washington, under Kendrick, in a cove where the gale hid her from Gray.



On August 11, 1790, after rounding Good Hope and touching at St. Helena, Gray entered Boston. It was the first time an American ship had gone round the world, almost fifty thousand miles, her log-book showed, and salvos of artillery thundered a welcome. General Lincoln, the port collector, was first on board to shake Gray's hand. The whole city of Boston was on the wharf to cheer him home, and the explorer walked up the streets side by side with Atto, the Hawaiian boy, gorgeous in helmet and cloak of yellow plumage. Governor Hancock gave a public reception to Gray. The Columbia went to the shipyards to be overhauled, and the shareholders met.

Owing to the glutting of the market at Canton, the sea-otter had not sold well. Practically the venture of these glory seekers had not ended profitably. The voyage had been at a loss. Derby and Pintard sold out to Barrell and Brown. But the lure of glory, or the wilds, or the venture of the unknown, was on the others. They decided to send the Columbia back at {230} once on a second voyage. Perhaps, this time, she would find that great River of the West, which was to be to the Pacific coast what the Hudson was to the East.



Coolidge and Ingraham now left the Columbia for ventures of their own to the Pacific. Haswell, whose diary, with Gray's log-book, gives all details of the voyage, went as first mate. George Davidson, an artist, Samuel Yendell, a carpenter, Haskins, an accountant of Barrell's Company, Joshua Caswell of Maiden, Abraham Waters, and John Boit were the new men to enlist for the venturesome voyage. The Columbia left Boston for a second voyage September 28, 1790, and reached Clayoquot on the west coast of Vancouver Island on June 5, 1791. True to his nature, Gray lost not a day, but was off for the sea-otter harvest of the north, up Portland Canal near what is now Alaska. The dangers of the first voyage proved a holiday compared to this trip. Formerly, Gray had treated the Indians with kindness. Now, he found kindness was mistaken only for fear. Joshua Caswell, Barnes, and Folger had been sent up Portland Canal to reconnoitre. Whether ambushed or openly assaulted, they never returned. Only Caswell's body was found, and buried on the beach. Later, when the grave was revisited, the body had been stolen, in all likelihood for cannibal rites, as no more degraded savages exist than those of this archipelago. Over on Queen Charlotte Island, Kendrick, who had returned from China on the Lady Washington, {232} was having his own time. One day, when all had gone below decks to rest, a taunting laugh was heard from the hatchway. Kendrick rushed above to find Indians scrambling over the decks of the Lady Washington like a nest of disgruntled hornets. A warrior flourished the key of the ammunition chest, which stood by the hatchway, in Kendrick's face with the words: "Key is mine! So is the ship!"

If Kendrick had hesitated for the fraction of a second, all would have been lost, as on Astor's ship a few years later; but before the savages had time for any concerted signal, he had seized the speaker by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him into the sea. In a second every savage had scuttled over decks; but the scalp of Kendrick's son Solomon was found on the beach. Henceforth neither Kendrick nor Gray allowed more than ten savages on board at a time, and Kendrick at once headed south to take the harvest of furs to China. At Nootka things had gone from bad to worse between the English and the Spaniards. Though Kendrick bought great tracts of land from the Indian chiefs at Nootka for the price of a copper kettle, he judged it prudent to keep away from a Spanish commander, whose mission it was to capture the ships of rival traders; so the American sloop moored in Clayoquot, south of Nootka, where Gray found Kendrick ready to sail for China by September.

At Clayoquot was built the first American fort on the Pacific coast. Here Gray erected winter quarters. {233} The Columbia was unrigged and beached. The dense forest rang with the sound of the choppers. The enormous spruce, cedar, and fir trees were hewn into logs for several cabins and a barracks, the bark slabs being used as a palisade. Inside the main house were quarters for ten men. Loopholes punctured all sides of the house. Two cannon were mounted outside the window embrasures, one inside the gate or door. The post was named Fort Defence. Sentinels kept guard night and day. Military discipline was maintained, and divine service held each Sunday. On October 3 timbers were laid for a new ship, to be called the Adventure, to collect furs for the Columbia. All the winter of 1791-1792, Gray visited the Indians, sent medicines to their sick, allowed his men to go shooting with them, and even nursed one ill chief inside the barracks; but he was most careful not to allow women or more than a few warriors inside the fort.

What was his horror, then, on February 18, when Atto, the Hawaiian boy, came to him with news that the Indians, gathered to the number of two thousand, and armed with at least two hundred muskets got in trade, had planned the entire extermination of the whites. They had offered to make the Hawaiian boy a great chief among them if he would steal more ammunition for the Indians, wet all the priming of the white men's arms, and join the conspiracy to let the savages get possession of fort and ship. In the history of American pathfinding, no explorer was ever in greater {234} danger. Less than a score of whites against two thousand armed warriors! Scarcely any ammunition had been brought in from the Columbia. All the swivels of the dismantled ship were lying on the bank. Gray instantly took advantage of high tide to get the ship on her sea legs, and out from the bank. Swivels were trundled with all speed back to the decks. For that night a guard watched the fort; but the next night, when the assault was expected, all hands were on board, provisions had been stowed in the hold, and small arms were loaded. The men were still to mid-waist in water, scraping barnacles from the keel, when a whoop sounded from the shore; but the change in the ship's position evidently upset the plans of the savages, for they withdrew. On the morning of the 20th the woods were seen to be alive with ambushed men; and Haswell had the cannon loaded with canister fired into the woods. At eleven that very morning, the chief, at the head of the plot, came to sell otter skins, and ask if some of the crew would not visit the village. Gray jerked the skins from his arms, and the rascal was over decks in terror of his life. That was the end of the plot. On the 23d the Adventure was launched, the second vessel built on the Pacific, the first American vessel built there at all; and by April 2 Haswell was ready to go north on her. Gray on the Columbia was going south to have another try at that great River of the West, which Spanish charts represented.

{235} Without a doubt, if the river existed at all, it was down behind that Cape Disappointment where Meares had failed to go in, and Heceta been driven back. Just what Gray did between April 2 and May 7 is a matter of guessing. Anyway, Captain George Vancouver sent out from England to settle the dispute about Nootka, at six o'clock on the morning of April 29, just off the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery, and within sight of Olympus's snowy sky-line, noticed a ship on the offing carrying American colors. He sent Mr. Puget and Mr. Menzies to inquire.

They brought back word that Gray "had been off the mouth of a river in 46 degrees 10 minutes where the outset and reflux was so strong as to prevent entering for nine days," and that Gray had been fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca.

Both facts were distasteful to Vancouver. He had wished to be the first to explore the Straits of Fuca, and on only April 27, had passed an opening which he pronounced inaccessible and not a river, certainly not a river worthy of his attention. Yet the exact words of Captain Bruno Heceta, the Spaniard, in 1775 were: "These currents . . . cause me to believe that the place is the mouth of some great river. . . . I did not enter and anchor there because . . . if we let go the anchor, we had not enough men to get it up. (Thirty-five were down with scurvy.) . . . At the distance of three or four leagues, I lay too. I experienced heavy currents, which made it impossible to enter the {236} bay, as I was far to leeward. . . . These currents, however, convince me that a great quantity of water rushed from this bay on the ebb of the tide."

So the Spaniard failed to enter, and now the great English navigator went on his way, convinced there was no River of the West; but Robert Gray headed back south determined to find what lay behind the tremendous crash of breakers and sand bar. On the 7th of May, the rowboat towed the Columbia into what is now known as Gray's Harbor, where he opened trade with the Indians, and was presently so boldly overrun by them, that he was compelled to fire into their canoes, killing seven. Putting out from this harbor on the 10th, he steered south, keeping close ashore, and was rewarded at four o'clock on the morning of the 11th by hearing a tide-rip like thunder and seeing an ocean of waters crashing sheer over sand bar and reef with a cataract of foam in midair from the drive of colliding waves. Milky waters tinged the sea as of inland streams. Gray had found the river, but could he enter? A gentle wind, straight as a die, was driving direct ashore. Gray waited till the tide seemed to lift or deepen the waters of the reef, then at eight in the morning, all sails set like a bird on wing, drove straight for the narrow entrance between reefs and sand. Once across the bar, he saw the mouth of a magnificent river of fresh water. He had found the River of the West.

Gray describes the memorable event in these simple {237} words: "May 11th . . . at four A.M. saw the entrance of our desired port bearing east-southeast, distance six leagues . . . at eight A.M. being a little to windward of the entrance of the harbor, bore away, and ran in east-southeast between the breakers. . . . When we were over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered. Many canoes came alongside. At one P.M. came to (anchor). . . ."



By the 14th, Gray had ascended the river twenty or thirty miles from the sea, but was compelled to turn, as he had taken a shallow channel. Dropping down with the tide, he anchored on the 19th and went ashore, where he planted coins under a tree, took {238} possession in the name of the United States, and named the river "Columbia." On the 20th, he crossed the bar and was out again on the Pacific. The most of men would have rested, satisfied with half he had done. Not so Gray. He headed the Columbia north again for the summer's trade in what is now known as southern Alaska. Only damages to the Columbia drove her down to Nootka in July, where Don Quadra, the new Spanish commander, and Captain Vancouver were in conference over those English ships seized by Martinez. To Quadra, Gray sold the little Adventure, pioneer of American shipbuilding on the Pacific, for seventy-five otter skins. From Spanish sources it is learned Gray's cargo had over three thousand otter skins, and fifteen thousand other peltries; so the second voyage may have made up for the loss of the first.



On October 3 the Columbia left America for China; and on July 29, 1793, came to the home harbor of Boston. Sometime between 1806 and 1809, Gray died in South Carolina, a poor man. It is doubtful if his widow's petition to Congress ever materialized in a reward for any of his descendants. Kendrick, eclipsed by his brilliant assistant, was accidentally killed in Hawaii by the wad of a gun fired by a British vessel to salute the Lady Washington. From the date 1793 or 1795 the little sloop drops out of sea-faring annals.

What is Gray's place among pathfinders and naval {239} heroes? Where does his life's record leave him? It was not spectacular work. It was not work backed by a government, like Bering's or Cook's. It was the work of an individual adventurer, like Radisson east of the Rockies. Gray was a man who did much and said little. He was not accompanied by a host of scientists to herald his fame to the world. Judged solely by results, what did he accomplish? The same for the United States that Cook did for England. He led the way for the American flag around the world. Measuring purely by distance, his ship's log would compare well with Cook's or Vancouver's. The same part of the Pacific coast which they {240} explored, he explored, except that he did not go to northern Alaska; and he compensated for that by discovering the great river, which they both said had no existence. And yet, who that knows of Cook and Vancouver, knows as much of Gray? Authentic histories are still written that speak of Gray's discovery doubtfully. Gray did much, but said little; and the world is prone to take a man at his own valuation. Yet if the world places Cook and Vancouver in the niches of naval heroes, Gray must be placed between them.

There is a curious human side to the story of these glory seekers, too. Bulfinch was so delighted over the discovery of the Columbia, that he had his daughter christened "Columbia," to which the young lady objected in later years, so that the name was dropped. In commemoration of Don Quadra's kindness in repairing the ship Columbia, Gray named one of his children Quadra. The curios brought back by Ingraham on the first voyage were donated to Harvard. Descendants of Gray still have the pictures drawn by Davidson and Haswell on the second voyage. The sea chest carried round the world by Gray now rests in the keeping of an historical society in Portland; and the feather cloak worn up the street by the boy Atto, when he marched in the procession with Gray, is treasured in Boston.[1]



[1] Much concerning Gray's voyages can be found in the accounts of contemporary navigators like Meares and Vancouver; but the essential facts of the voyages are obtainable from the records of Gray's log-book, and of diaries kept by his officers. {241} Gray's log-book itself seems to have passed into the hands of the Bulfinch family. From a copy of the original, Thomas Bulfinch reprinted the exact entry of the discovery on May 11, 1792, in his Oregon and Eldorado, a Romance of the Rivers, Boston, 1866. The log-book is now on file in the Department of State, Washington; but that part from which Bulfinch made his extract is missing; nor is it known where this section was lost as it was in 1816 that Mr. Charles Bulfinch made a copy of this section from the original. Greenhow's Oregon and California, Boston, 1844, issued under the auspices of Congress, gives the log-book in full from May 7th to May 21st. Hubert Howe Bancroft in his Northwest Coast, Volume I, 1890, reproduces the diary in full of Haswell for both voyages. It is from Haswell that the fullest account of the Indian plots are obtained; but at the time of the discovery of the Columbia, Haswell was on the little sloop Adventure, and what he reports is from hearsay. His words in the entry of June 14 are; "They (the Columbia) had very disagreeable weather but . . . good success. . . They discovered a harbor in latitude 46 degrees 53 minutes north. . . . This is Gray's Harbor. Here they were attacked by the natives, and the savages had a considerable slaughter made among them. They next entered Columbia River, and went up it about thirty miles, and doubted not it was navigable upwards of a hundred miles. . . . The ship (Columbia) during the cruise had collected upwards of seven hundred sea-otter skins and fifteen thousand skins of other species." The pictures made by Davidson, the artist, on the second voyage, owned by collectors in Boston, tell their own story. From all these sources, and from the descendants of Gray, the Rev. Edward G. Porter collected data for his lecture before the Massachusetts Historical Society, afterward published in the New England Magazine of June, 1892. The Massachusetts Historical Proceedings for 1892 have, by all odds, the most complete collection of data bearing on Gray. The archives include the medal and three of Davidson's drawings, also papers relating to the Columbia presented by Barrell. The Salem Institute has also some data on the ships. The Massachusetts Proceedings for 1869-1870 also give, from the Archives of California, the letter of Governor Don Pedro Fages of Santa Barbara to Don Josef Arguello of San Francisco, warning the latter against the American navigators. Greenhow obtained from the Hydrographical Office at Madrid the report of Captain Bruno Heceta's voyage in 1775, when he sighted the mouth of a river supposed to be the Columbia.



{242}

CHAPTER IX

1778-1790

JOHN LEDYARD, THE FORERUNNER OF LEWIS AND CLARK

A New England Ne'er-do-well, turned from the Door of Rich Relatives, joins Cook's Expedition to America—Adventure among the Russians of Oonalaska—Useless Endeavor to interest New England Merchants in Fur Trade—A Soldier of Fortune in Paris, he meets Jefferson and Paul Jones and outlines Exploration of Western America—Succeeds in crossing Siberia alone on the Way to America, but is thwarted by Russian Fur Traders

When his relatives banged the door in his face, turning him destitute in the streets of London, if John Ledyard could have foreseen that the act would indirectly lead to the Lewis and Clark exploration of the great region between the Mississippi and the Pacific, he would doubtless have regarded the unkindness as Dick Whittington did the cat, that led on to fortune. He had been a dreamer from the time he was born in Groton, opposite New London, Connecticut—the kind of a dreamer whose moonshine lights the path of other men to success; but his wildest dreams never dared the bigness of an empire many times greater than the original states of the Union.

{243} Instead he had landed at Plymouth, ragged, not a farthing in the bottom of his pockets, not a farthing's possession on earth but his hopes. Those hopes were to reach rich relatives in London, who might give him a lift to the first rung of the world's climbers. He was twenty-five years old. He had burned his ships behind him. That is, he had disappointed all his relatives in America so thoroughly that he could never again turn for help to the home hands.

They had designed him for a profession, these New England friends. If Nature had designed him for the same thing, it would have been all right; but she hadn't. The son of a widowed mother, the love of the sea, of pathless places, of what is just out of sight over the dip of the horizon, was in his blood from his father's side. Friends thought he should be well satisfied when he was sent to live with his grandfather at Hartford and apprenticed to the law; but John Ledyard hated the pettifogging of the law, hated roofed-over, walled-in life, wanted the kind of life where men do things, not just dicker, and philosophize, and compromise over the fag-ends of things other men have done. At twenty-one years of age, without any of the prospects that lure the prudent soul, he threw over all idea of law.[1]

Friends were aghast. Manifestly, the boy had {244} brains. He devoured information, absorbed facts like an encyclopaedia, and observed everything. The Greek Testament and Ovid were his companions; yet he rebelled at the immured existence of the scholar. At that time (1772), Dartmouth was the rendezvous of {245} missionaries to the Indians. The college itself held lectures to the singing of the winds through the forests around it. The blowing of a conch-shell called to lessons; and a sort of wildwood piety pervaded the atmosphere. Urged by his mother, Ledyard made one more honest attempt to fit his life to a stereotyped form, and came to study at Dartmouth for the missionary's career.

It was not a success. When he thought to get a foretaste of the missionary vocation by making a dugout and floating down the whole length of Connecticut River, one hundred and forty miles, the scholarly professors were shocked. And when he disappeared for four months to make a farther test by living among the Mohawks, the faculty was furious. His friends gave him up as hopeless, a ne'er-do-well; and Ledyard gave over the farce of trying to live according to other men's patterns.



What now determined him was what directs the most of lives—need for bread and butter. He became a common sailor on the ship of a friend in New London, and at twenty-five landed in Plymouth, light of heart as he was light of purse. The world was an oyster to be opened by his own free lance; and up he tramped from Plymouth to London in company with an Irishman penniless as himself, gay as a lark, to the world's great capital with the world's great prizes for those with the wits to win them. A carriage with driver {246} and footman in livery wearing the armorial design of his own Ledyard ancestors rolled past in the street. He ran to the coachman, asked the address, and presented himself at the door of the ancestral Ledyards, hope beating high. The relationship was to be the key to open all doors. And the door of the ancestral Ledyards was shut in his face. The father was out. The son put no stock in the story of the ragged stranger. He did not even know that Ledyards existed in America. What was to hinder any common tramp trumping up such a story? Where were the tattered fellow's proofs? Ledyard came away with just enough wholesome human rage to keep him from sinking to despair, or to what is more unmanning, self-pity. He had failed before, through trying to frame his life to other men's plans. He had failed now, through trying to win success through other men's efforts—a barnacle clinging to the hull of some craft freighted with fortune. Perhaps, too, he fairly and squarely faced the fact that if he was to be one whit different from the beggar for whom he had been mistaken, he must build his own life solely and wholly on his own efforts.

On he wandered, the roar of the great city's activities rolling past him in a tide. His rage had time to cool. Afternoon, twilight, dark; and still the tide rolled past him; past him because like a stranded hull rotting for lack of use, he had put himself outside the tide of human effort. He must build up his own career. That was the fact he had wrested out of his {247} rage; but unless his abilities were to rot in some stagnant pool, he must launch out on the great tide of human work. Before he had taken that resolution, the roar of the city had been terrifying—a tide that might swamp. Now, the thunder of the world's traffic was a shout of triumph. He would launch out, let the tide carry him where it might.