All through the sixteenth century the South Seas were regarded as a mysterious wonderworld, whence Spain drew unlimited wealth of gold and silver bullion, of pearls and precious stones. Spain had declared the Pacific 'a closed sea' to the rest of the world. But in 1567 it happened that Sir John Hawkins, an English mariner, was cruising in the Gulf of Mexico, when a terrific squall, as he said, drove his ships landward to Vera Cruz, and he sent a messenger to the Spanish viceroy there asking perm

Since Drake's day more than a century had rolled on. Russia was awakening from ages of sleep, as Japan has awakened in our time, and Peter the Great was endeavouring to pilot the ship of state out to the wide seas of a world destiny. Peter, like the German Kaiser of to-day, was ambitious to make his country a world-power. He had seen enough of Europe to learn that neighbouring nations were increasing their strength in three ways—by conquest, by discovery, and by foreign commerce—and that foreign

Chirikoff's crew on the St Paul had long since returned in safety to Kamchatka, and the garrison of the fort on Avacha Bay had given up Bering's men as lost for ever, when one August morning the sentinel on guard along the shore front of Petropavlovsk descried a strange apparition approaching across the silver surface of an unruffled sea. It was like a huge whale, racing, galloping, coming in leaps and bounds of flying fins over the water towards the fort. The soldier telescoped his eyes with hi

It was the quest for a passage to the Atlantic that brought Captain James Cook to the Pacific. Before joining the Royal Navy, Cook had been engaged as a captain in the Baltic trade; and from Russian merchantmen he had learned all about Bering's voyage in the North Pacific, which was being quoted by the geographers in proof of an open passage north of Alaska. In the Baltic, too, Cook had heard about the strait of Juan de Fuca, which was supposed to lead through the continent to the Atlantic. At t

The movement of the fur traders towards the Pacific now became a fevered race for the wealth of a new El Dorado. Astor's traders in New York, the Scottish and English merchants of the North-West Company in Montreal, the Spanish traders of the South-West, even the directors of the sleepy old Hudson's Bay Company—all turned longing eyes to that Pacific north-west coast whence came sea-otter skins in trade, each for a few pennies' worth of beads, powder, or old iron. Rumours, too, were rife of the

American traders were not slow to follow up the discovery of Robert Gray on the Pacific. Spain, the pioneer pathfinder, had ceded Louisiana to France; and France, by way of checkmating British advance in North America, had sold Louisiana to the United States for fifteen million dollars. What did Louisiana include? Certainly, from New Orleans to the Missouri. Did it also include from the Missouri to Gray's river, the Columbia? The United States had sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark overland

While Fraser was working down the wild canyons of the great river which now bears his name, other fur traders were looking towards the Pacific ocean. In 1810 John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant, who bought furs from the Nor'westers in Montreal for shipment to Germany, formed the Pacific Fur Company, and took into its service a number of the partners and servants of the North-West Company. Some of these men were dispatched round the Horn in the Tonquin to the mouth of the Columbia; while anothe

When Astoria passed to the Nor'westers, with it came, as we shall see, an opportunity of acquiring for Great Britain the whole of the vast region west of the Rockies, including California and Alaska. Gray's feat in finding the mouth of the Columbia, and the explorations of Lewis and Clark overland to the same river, gave the United States possession of a part of this territory by right of discovery; but this possession was practically superseded by the transfer of Astor's fort to the British-Can

The bibliography of the Pacific is enormous. There is, indeed, a record of discovery and exploration on the Pacific coast almost as large as that of New France or New England. Only a few of the principal books can be mentioned here; but in most of these will be found good bibliographies which will point the reader to original sources, if he wishes to pursue the subject. ON DRAKE. Drake and the Tudor Navy , in two volumes, by Julian Corbett (1898); Sir Francis Drake , by the same author (1800), i

1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY By Stephen Leacock. 2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO By Stephen Leacock....

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE By Charles W. Colby. 4. THE JESUIT MISSIONS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA By William Bennett Munro. 6. THE GREAT INTENDANT By Thomas Chapais. 7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR By Charles W. Colby....

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS By William Wood. 9. THE ACADIAN EXILES By Arthur G. Doughty. 10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE By William Wood. 11. THE WINNING OF CANADA By William Wood....

12. THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA By William Wood. 13. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS By W. Stewart Wallace. 14. THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES By William Wood....

15. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 16. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS By Louis Aubrey Wood. 17. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE By Ethel T. Raymond....

18. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' ON HUDSON BAY By Agnes C. Laut. 19. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT PLAINS By Lawrence J. Burpee. 20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH By Stephen Leacock. 21. THE RED RIVER COLONY By Louis Aubrey Wood. 22. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST By Agnes C. Laut. 23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL By Agnes C. Laut....

24. THE FAMILY COMPACT By W. Stewart Wallace. 25. THE 'PATRIOTES' OF '37 By Alfred D. DeCelles. 26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA By William Lawson Grant. 27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT By Archibald MacMechan....

28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION By A. H. U. Colquhoun. 29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD By Sir Joseph Pope. 30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER By Oscar D. Skelton....

31. ALL AFLOAT By William Wood. 32. THE RAILWAY BUILDERS By Oscar D. Skelton....