In the dark, somewhere near the sailors' mean lodgings, a hand touched
him. He turned; it was the rich man's son, come profuse of apologies:
his father had returned; father and son begged to proffer both
financial aid and hospitality--Ledyard cut him short with a terse but
forcible invitation to go his own way. That the unknown colonial at
once received a berth with Cook as corporal of marines, when half the
young men of England with influence to back their applications were
eager to join the voyage, speaks well for the sincerity of the new
enthusiasm.
{248} Cook left England in midsummer of 1776. He sighted the Pacific
coast, northward of what is now San Francisco, in the spring of 1778.
Ledyard was the first American to see the land that lay beyond the
Rockies. It was not a narrow strip as men had thought, but a broad
belt a thousand miles long by a thousand broad, an unclaimed world; for
storms drove Cook offshore here; and the English discoverer did not
land till abreast of British America.
At Nootka thousands of Indians flocked round the two vessels to trade.
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