Note 6 — Group I. THREE RIVAL CIVILIZATIONS. (continued 2)

Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. Taken possession of by Spain, 1789. The English navigators Cook, Meares and Vancouver, being unable to find another good harbor between Cape Mendocino and Cape Flattery, hit upon Nootka as possessing the requirements of a port for their nation. Upon this a quarrel arose with Spain, which claimed Nootka in virtue of prior discovery. In the end Spain was obliged to relinquish Nootka to England. Vancouver, who gave his name to the large island to which Nootka Sound belongs, reached the coast April, 1792, near Cape Mendocino, but strangely missed the Columbia River, though he carefully looked for any opening in the coast line, which he declared to be unbroken from Mendocino to Cape Flattery. Vancouver's surveys were to fill the gap left open by Cook when he was blown off the coast. His passage through the Straits of Fuca had been anticipated by Captain Kendrick, of the American sloop "Washington," in 1790, thus first verifying the long-disputed fact of the existence of those straits.