When Puget landed for noon meal, a score of
redskins lined up ashore and began stringing their bows for action.
Puget drew a line along the sand with his cutlass and signalled the
warriors to keep back. They scrambled out of his reach with a great
clatter. It only needed some fellow bolder than the rest to push
across the line, and massacre would begin. Puget did not wait. By way
of putting the fear of the Lord and respect for the white man in the
heart of the Indian, he trained the swivel of the small boat landward,
and fired in midair. The result was instant. Weapons were dropped.
On Monday, midday, June 4, Vancouver and Broughton landed at Point
Possession. Officers drew up in line. The English flag was unfurled,
a royal salute fired, and possession taken of all the coast of New
Albion from latitude 39 to the Straits of Fuca, which Vancouver named
Gulf of Georgia. Just a month before, Gray, the American, had preceded
this act of {272} possession by a similar ceremony for the United
States on the banks of the Columbia.
The sum total of Vancouver's work so far had been the exploration of
Puget Sound, which is to the West what the Gulf of St.
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