After the death of Bering on the Commander Islands, and of Cook at
Hawaii, while on voyages to prove there was no Northeast Passage, no
open waterway between Pacific and Atlantic, it seems impossible that
the myth of an open sea from Asia to Europe could still delude men; but
it was in hunting for China that Columbus found America; and it was in
hunting for a something that had no existence except in the foolish
theories of the schoolmen that the whole northwest coast of America was
exploited.
{264} Bering had been called "coward" for not sailing through a solid
continent. Cook was accused of fur trading, "pottering in peltries,"
to the neglect of discovery, because his crews sold their sea-otter at
profit. To be sure, the combined results of Bering's and Cook's
voyages proved there was no waterway through Alaska to the Atlantic;
but in addition to blackening the reputations of the two great
navigators in order to throw discredit on their conclusions, the
schoolmen bellicosely demanded--Might there not be a passage south of
Alaska, between Russia's claim on the north and Spain's on the south?
Both Bering and Cook had been driven out from this section of the coast
by gales.
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