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CHAPTER VII
1728-1779
CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA
The English Navigator sent Two Hundred Years later to find the New
Albion of Drake's Discoveries--He misses both the Straits of Fuca and
the Mouth of the Columbia, but anchors at Nootka, the Rendezvous of
Future Traders--No Northeast Passage found through Alaska--The True
Cause of Cook's Murder in Hawaii told by Ledyard--Russia becomes
Jealous of his Explorations

It seems impossible that after all his arduous labors and death, to
prove his convictions, Bering's conclusions should have been rejected
by the world of learning. Surely his coasting westward, southwestward,
abreast the long arm of Alaska's peninsula for a thousand miles, should
have proved that no open sea--no Northeast Passage--was here, between
Asia and America. But no! the world of learning said fog had obscured
Bering's observations. What he took for the mainland of America had
been only a chain of islands. Northward of those islands was open sea
between Asia and Europe, which might afford direct passage between East
and West without circumnavigating the globe.


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