This left a thousand miles of American coast unexplored.
Cook had said there were no Straits of Fuca, of which the old Greek
pilot in the service of New Spain had told legends of fictitious
voyages two centuries before; yet Barclay, an East India English
trader, had been up those very straits. So had Meares, another trader.
So had Kendrick and Gray, the two Americans. This was the very section
which Bering and Cook had left untouched; and who could tell where
these straits might lead? They were like a second Mediterranean.
Meares argued they might connect with Hudson Bay.
Then Spain had forced matters to a climax by seizing Meares's vessels
and fort at Nootka as contraband. That had only one meaning: Spain was
trying to lay hands on everything from New Spain to Russian {265}
territory on the north. If Spain claimed all north to the Straits of
Fuca, and Russia claimed all south to the Straits of Fuca, where was
England's claim of New Albion discovered by Sir Francis Drake, and of
all that coast which Cook had sighted round Nootka?
Captain George Vancouver, formerly midshipman with Cook, was summoned
post-haste by the British Admiralty.
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