Vikings of the Pacific Part 12

On August 11, 1790, after rounding Good Hope and touching at St.

Helena, Gray entered Boston. It was the first time an American ship had gone round the world, almost fifty thousand miles, her log-book showed, and salvos of artillery thundered a welcome. General Lincoln, the port collector, was first on board to shake Gray's hand. The whole city of Boston was on the wharf to cheer him home, and the explorer walked up the streets side by side with Atto, the Hawaiian boy, gorgeous in helmet and cloak of yellow plumage. Governor Hanc.o.c.k gave a public reception to Gray. The _Columbia_ went to the shipyards to be overhauled, and the shareholders met.

Owing to the glutting of the market at Canton, the sea-otter had not sold well. Practically the venture of these glory seekers had not ended profitably. The voyage had been at a loss. Derby and Pintard sold out to Barrell and Brown. But the lure of glory, or the wilds, or the venture of the unknown, was on the others. They decided to send the _Columbia_ back at {230} once on a second voyage. Perhaps, this time, she would find that great River of the West, which was to be to the Pacific coast what the Hudson was to the East.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Gray's two voyages, resulting in the discovery of the Columbia.]

Coolidge and Ingraham now left the _Columbia_ for ventures of their own to the Pacific. Haswell, whose diary, with Gray's log-book, gives all details of the voyage, went as first mate. George Davidson, an artist, Samuel Yendell, a carpenter, Haskins, an accountant of Barrell's Company, Joshua Caswell of Maiden, Abraham Waters, and John Boit were the new men to enlist for the venturesome voyage. The _Columbia_ left Boston for a second voyage September 28, 1790, and reached Clayoquot on the west coast of Vancouver Island on June 5, 1791. True to his nature, Gray lost not a day, but was off for the sea-otter harvest of the north, up Portland Ca.n.a.l near what is now Alaska. The dangers of the first voyage proved a holiday compared to this trip. Formerly, Gray had treated the Indians with kindness. Now, he found kindness was mistaken only for fear. Joshua Caswell, Barnes, and Folger had been sent up Portland Ca.n.a.l to reconnoitre. Whether ambushed or openly a.s.saulted, they never returned. Only Caswell's body was found, and buried on the beach. Later, when the grave was revisited, the body had been stolen, in all likelihood for cannibal rites, as no more degraded savages exist than those of this archipelago. Over on Queen Charlotte Island, Kendrick, who had returned from China on the _Lady Washington_, {232} was having his own time. One day, when all had gone below decks to rest, a taunting laugh was heard from the hatchway. Kendrick rushed above to find Indians scrambling over the decks of the _Lady Washington_ like a nest of disgruntled hornets. A warrior flourished the key of the ammunition chest, which stood by the hatchway, in Kendrick's face with the words: "Key is mine! So is the ship!"

If Kendrick had hesitated for the fraction of a second, all would have been lost, as on Astor's ship a few years later; but before the savages had time for any concerted signal, he had seized the speaker by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him into the sea. In a second every savage had scuttled over decks; but the scalp of Kendrick's son Solomon was found on the beach. Henceforth neither Kendrick nor Gray allowed more than ten savages on board at a time, and Kendrick at once headed south to take the harvest of furs to China. At Nootka things had gone from bad to worse between the English and the Spaniards. Though Kendrick bought great tracts of land from the Indian chiefs at Nootka for the price of a copper kettle, he judged it prudent to keep away from a Spanish commander, whose mission it was to capture the ships of rival traders; so the American sloop moored in Clayoquot, south of Nootka, where Gray found Kendrick ready to sail for China by September.

At Clayoquot was built the first American fort on the Pacific coast.

Here Gray erected winter quarters. {233} The _Columbia_ was unrigged and beached. The dense forest rang with the sound of the choppers.

The enormous spruce, cedar, and fir trees were hewn into logs for several cabins and a barracks, the bark slabs being used as a palisade.

Inside the main house were quarters for ten men. Loopholes punctured all sides of the house. Two cannon were mounted outside the window embrasures, one inside the gate or door. The post was named Fort Defence. Sentinels kept guard night and day. Military discipline was maintained, and divine service held each Sunday. On October 3 timbers were laid for a new ship, to be called the _Adventure_, to collect furs for the _Columbia_. All the winter of 1791-1792, Gray visited the Indians, sent medicines to their sick, allowed his men to go shooting with them, and even nursed one ill chief inside the barracks; but he was most careful not to allow women or more than a few warriors inside the fort.

What was his horror, then, on February 18, when Atto, the Hawaiian boy, came to him with news that the Indians, gathered to the number of two thousand, and armed with at least two hundred muskets got in trade, had planned the entire extermination of the whites. They had offered to make the Hawaiian boy a great chief among them if he would steal more ammunition for the Indians, wet all the priming of the white men's arms, and join the conspiracy to let the savages get possession of fort and ship. In the history of American pathfinding, no explorer was ever in greater {234} danger. Less than a score of whites against two thousand armed warriors! Scarcely any ammunition had been brought in from the _Columbia_. All the swivels of the dismantled ship were lying on the bank. Gray instantly took advantage of high tide to get the ship on her sea legs, and out from the bank. Swivels were trundled with all speed back to the decks. For that night a guard watched the fort; but the next night, when the a.s.sault was expected, all hands were on board, provisions had been stowed in the hold, and small arms were loaded. The men were still to mid-waist in water, sc.r.a.ping barnacles from the keel, when a whoop sounded from the sh.o.r.e; but the change in the ship's position evidently upset the plans of the savages, for they withdrew. On the morning of the 20th the woods were seen to be alive with ambushed men; and Haswell had the cannon loaded with canister fired into the woods. At eleven that very morning, the chief, at the head of the plot, came to sell otter skins, and ask if some of the crew would not visit the village. Gray jerked the skins from his arms, and the rascal was over decks in terror of his life. That was the end of the plot. On the 23d the _Adventure_ was launched, the second vessel built on the Pacific, the first American vessel built there at all; and by April 2 Haswell was ready to go north on her. Gray on the _Columbia_ was going south to have another try at that great River of the West, which Spanish charts represented.

{235} Without a doubt, if the river existed at all, it was down behind that Cape Disappointment where Meares had failed to go in, and Heceta been driven back. Just what Gray did between April 2 and May 7 is a matter of guessing. Anyway, Captain George Vancouver sent out from England to settle the dispute about Nootka, at six o'clock on the morning of April 29, just off the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery, and within sight of Olympus's snowy sky-line, noticed a ship on the offing carrying American colors. He sent Mr. Puget and Mr. Menzies to inquire.

They brought back word that Gray "had been off the mouth of a river in 46 degrees 10 minutes where the outset and reflux was so strong as to prevent entering for nine days," and that Gray had been fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca.

Both facts were distasteful to Vancouver. He had wished to be the first to explore the Straits of Fuca, and on only April 27, had pa.s.sed an opening which he p.r.o.nounced inaccessible and not a river, certainly not a river worthy of his attention. Yet the exact words of Captain Bruno Heceta, the Spaniard, in 1775 were: "These currents . . . cause me to believe that the place is the mouth of some great river. . . . I did not enter and anchor there because . . . if we let go the anchor, we had not enough men to get it up. (Thirty-five were down with scurvy.) . . . At the distance of three or four leagues, I lay too. I experienced heavy currents, which made it impossible to enter the {236} bay, as I was far to leeward. . . . These currents, however, convince me that a great quant.i.ty of water rushed from this bay on the ebb of the tide."

So the Spaniard failed to enter, and now the great English navigator went on his way, convinced there was no River of the West; but Robert Gray headed back south determined to find what lay behind the tremendous crash of breakers and sand bar. On the 7th of May, the rowboat towed the _Columbia_ into what is now known as Gray's Harbor, where he opened trade with the Indians, and was presently so boldly overrun by them, that he was compelled to fire into their canoes, killing seven. Putting out from this harbor on the 10th, he steered south, keeping close ash.o.r.e, and was rewarded at four o'clock on the morning of the 11th by hearing a tide-rip like thunder and seeing an ocean of waters crashing sheer over sand bar and reef with a cataract of foam in midair from the drive of colliding waves. Milky waters tinged the sea as of inland streams. Gray had found the river, but could he enter? A gentle wind, straight as a die, was driving direct ash.o.r.e. Gray waited till the tide seemed to lift or deepen the waters of the reef, then at eight in the morning, all sails set like a bird on wing, drove straight for the narrow entrance between reefs and sand.

Once across the bar, he saw the mouth of a magnificent river of fresh water. He had found the River of the West.

Gray describes the memorable event in these simple {237} words: "May 11th . . . at four A.M. saw the entrance of our desired port bearing east-southeast, distance six leagues . . . at eight A.M. being a little to windward of the entrance of the harbor, bore away, and ran in east-southeast between the breakers. . . . When we were over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered.

Many canoes came alongside. At one P.M. came to (anchor). . . ."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A View of the Columbia River.]

By the 14th, Gray had ascended the river twenty or thirty miles from the sea, but was compelled to turn, as he had taken a shallow channel.

Dropping down with the tide, he anch.o.r.ed on the 19th and went ash.o.r.e, where he planted coins under a tree, took {238} possession in the name of the United States, and named the river "Columbia." On the 20th, he crossed the bar and was out again on the Pacific. The most of men would have rested, satisfied with half he had done. Not so Gray. He headed the _Columbia_ north again for the summer's trade in what is now known as southern Alaska. Only damages to the _Columbia_ drove her down to Nootka in July, where Don Quadra, the new Spanish commander, and Captain Vancouver were in conference over those English ships seized by Martinez. To Quadra, Gray sold the little _Adventure_, pioneer of American shipbuilding on the Pacific, for seventy-five otter skins. From Spanish sources it is learned Gray's cargo had over three thousand otter skins, and fifteen thousand other peltries; so the second voyage may have made up for the loss of the first.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At the Mouth of the Columbia River.]

On October 3 the _Columbia_ left America for China; and on July 29, 1793, came to the home harbor of Boston. Sometime between 1806 and 1809, Gray died in South Carolina, a poor man. It is doubtful if his widow's pet.i.tion to Congress ever materialized in a reward for any of his descendants. Kendrick, eclipsed by his brilliant a.s.sistant, was accidentally killed in Hawaii by the wad of a gun fired by a British vessel to salute the _Lady Washington_. From the date 1793 or 1795 the little sloop drops out of sea-faring annals.

What is Gray's place among pathfinders and naval {239} heroes? Where does his life's record leave him? It was not spectacular work. It was not work backed by a government, like Bering's or Cook's. It was the work of an individual adventurer, like Radisson east of the Rockies.

Gray was a man who did much and said little. He was not accompanied by a host of scientists to herald his fame to the world. Judged solely by results, what did he accomplish? The same for the United States that Cook did for England. He led the way for the American flag around the world. Measuring purely by distance, his ship's log would compare well with Cook's or Vancouver's. The same part of the Pacific coast which they {240} explored, he explored, except that he did not go to northern Alaska; and he compensated for that by discovering the great river, which they both said had no existence. And yet, who that knows of Cook and Vancouver, knows as much of Gray? Authentic histories are still written that speak of Gray's discovery doubtfully. Gray did much, but said little; and the world is p.r.o.ne to take a man at his own valuation.

Yet if the world places Cook and Vancouver in the niches of naval heroes, Gray must be placed between them.

There is a curious human side to the story of these glory seekers, too.

Bulfinch was so delighted over the discovery of the Columbia, that he had his daughter christened "Columbia," to which the young lady objected in later years, so that the name was dropped. In commemoration of Don Quadra's kindness in repairing the ship _Columbia_, Gray named one of his children Quadra. The curios brought back by Ingraham on the first voyage were donated to Harvard.

Descendants of Gray still have the pictures drawn by Davidson and Haswell on the second voyage. The sea chest carried round the world by Gray now rests in the keeping of an historical society in Portland; and the feather cloak worn up the street by the boy Atto, when he marched in the procession with Gray, is treasured in Boston.[1]

[1] Much concerning Gray's voyages can be found in the accounts of contemporary navigators like Meares and Vancouver; but the essential facts of the voyages are obtainable from the records of Gray's log-book, and of diaries kept by his officers. {241} Gray's log-book itself seems to have pa.s.sed into the hands of the Bulfinch family.

From a copy of the original, Thomas Bulfinch reprinted the exact entry of the discovery on May 11, 1792, in his _Oregon and Eldorado, a Romance of the Rivers_, Boston, 1866. The log-book is now on file in the Department of State, Washington; but that part from which Bulfinch made his extract is missing; nor is it known where this section was lost as it was in 1816 that Mr. Charles Bulfinch made a copy of this section from the original. Greenhow's _Oregon and California_, Boston, 1844, issued under the auspices of Congress, gives the log-book in full from May 7th to May 21st. Hubert Howe Bancroft in his _Northwest Coast_, Volume I, 1890, reproduces the diary in full of Haswell for both voyages. It is from Haswell that the fullest account of the Indian plots are obtained; but at the time of the discovery of the Columbia, Haswell was on the little sloop _Adventure_, and what he reports is from hearsay. His words in the entry of June 14 are; "They (the _Columbia_) had very disagreeable weather but . . . good success.

. . They discovered a harbor in lat.i.tude 46 degrees 53 minutes north.

. . . This is Gray's Harbor. Here they were attacked by the natives, and the savages had a considerable slaughter made among them. They next entered Columbia River, and went up it about thirty miles, and doubted not it was navigable upwards of a hundred miles. . . . The ship (_Columbia_) during the cruise had collected upwards of seven hundred sea-otter skins and fifteen thousand skins of other species."

The pictures made by Davidson, the artist, on the second voyage, owned by collectors in Boston, tell their own story. From all these sources, and from the descendants of Gray, the Rev. Edward G. Porter collected data for his lecture before the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, afterward published in the _New England Magazine_ of June, 1892. The _Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Proceedings_ for 1892 have, by all odds, the most complete collection of data bearing on Gray. The archives include the medal and three of Davidson's drawings, also papers relating to the _Columbia_ presented by Barrell. The Salem Inst.i.tute has also some data on the ships. The _Ma.s.sachusetts Proceedings_ for 1869-1870 also give, from the Archives of California, the letter of Governor Don Pedro f.a.ges of Santa Barbara to Don Josef Arguello of San Francisco, warning the latter against the American navigators. Greenhow obtained from the Hydrographical Office at Madrid the report of Captain Bruno Heceta's voyage in 1775, when he sighted the mouth of a river supposed to be the Columbia.

{242}

CHAPTER IX

1778-1790

JOHN LEDYARD, THE FORERUNNER OF LEWIS AND CLARK

A New England Ne'er-do-well, turned from the Door of Rich Relatives, joins Cook's Expedition to America--Adventure among the Russians of Oonalaska--Useless Endeavor to interest New England Merchants in Fur Trade--A Soldier of Fortune in Paris, he meets Jefferson and Paul Jones and outlines Exploration of Western America--Succeeds in crossing Siberia alone on the Way to America, but is thwarted by Russian Fur Traders

When his relatives banged the door in his face, turning him dest.i.tute in the streets of London, if John Ledyard could have foreseen that the act would indirectly lead to the Lewis and Clark exploration of the great region between the Mississippi and the Pacific, he would doubtless have regarded the unkindness as d.i.c.k Whittington did the cat, that led on to fortune. He had been a dreamer from the time he was born in Groton, opposite New London, Connecticut--the kind of a dreamer whose moonshine lights the path of other men to success; but his wildest dreams never dared the bigness of an empire many times greater than the original states of the Union.

{243} Instead he had landed at Plymouth, ragged, not a farthing in the bottom of his pockets, not a farthing's possession on earth but his hopes. Those hopes were to reach rich relatives in London, who might give him a lift to the first rung of the world's climbers. He was twenty-five years old. He had burned his ships behind him. That is, he had disappointed all his relatives in America so thoroughly that he could never again turn for help to the home hands.

They had designed him for a profession, these New England friends. If Nature had designed him for the same thing, it would have been all right; but she hadn't. The son of a widowed mother, the love of the sea, of pathless places, of what is just out of sight over the dip of the horizon, was in his blood from his father's side. Friends thought he should be well satisfied when he was sent to live with his grandfather at Hartford and apprenticed to the law; but John Ledyard hated the pettifogging of the law, hated roofed-over, walled-in life, wanted the kind of life where men do things, not just d.i.c.ker, and philosophize, and compromise over the f.a.g-ends of things other men have done. At twenty-one years of age, without any of the prospects that lure the prudent soul, he threw over all idea of law.[1]

Friends were aghast. Manifestly, the boy had {244} brains. He devoured information, absorbed facts like an encyclopaedia, and observed everything. The Greek Testament and Ovid were his companions; yet he rebelled at the immured existence of the scholar. At that time (1772), Dartmouth was the rendezvous of {245} missionaries to the Indians. The college itself held lectures to the singing of the winds through the forests around it. The blowing of a conch-sh.e.l.l called to lessons; and a sort of wildwood piety pervaded the atmosphere. Urged by his mother, Ledyard made one more honest attempt to fit his life to a stereotyped form, and came to study at Dartmouth for the missionary's career.

It was not a success. When he thought to get a foretaste of the missionary vocation by making a dugout and floating down the whole length of Connecticut River, one hundred and forty miles, the scholarly professors were shocked. And when he disappeared for four months to make a farther test by living among the Mohawks, the faculty was furious. His friends gave him up as hopeless, a ne'er-do-well; and Ledyard gave over the farce of trying to live according to other men's patterns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ledyard in his dugout, from a contemporaneous print.]

What now determined him was what directs the most of lives--need for bread and b.u.t.ter. He became a common sailor on the ship of a friend in New London, and at twenty-five landed in Plymouth, light of heart as he was light of purse. The world was an oyster to be opened by his own free lance; and up he tramped from Plymouth to London in company with an Irishman penniless as himself, gay as a lark, to the world's great capital with the world's great prizes for those with the wits to win them. A carriage with driver {246} and footman in livery wearing the armorial design of his own Ledyard ancestors rolled past in the street.

He ran to the coachman, asked the address, and presented himself at the door of the ancestral Ledyards, hope beating high. The relationship was to be the key to open all doors. And the door of the ancestral Ledyards was shut in his face. The father was out. The son put no stock in the story of the ragged stranger. He did not even know that Ledyards existed in America. What was to hinder any common tramp trumping up such a story? Where were the tattered fellow's proofs?

Ledyard came away with just enough wholesome human rage to keep him from sinking to despair, or to what is more unmanning, self-pity. He had failed before, through trying to frame his life to other men's plans. He had failed now, through trying to win success through other men's efforts--a barnacle clinging to the hull of some craft freighted with fortune. Perhaps, too, he fairly and squarely faced the fact that if he was to be one whit different from the beggar for whom he had been mistaken, he must build his own life solely and wholly on his own efforts.

On he wandered, the roar of the great city's activities rolling past him in a tide. His rage had time to cool. Afternoon, twilight, dark; and still the tide rolled past him; _past him_ because like a stranded hull rotting for lack of use, he had put himself _outside_ the tide of human effort. He must build up his own career. That was the fact he had wrested out of his {247} rage; but unless his abilities were to rot in some stagnant pool, he must launch out on the great tide of human work. Before he had taken that resolution, the roar of the city had been terrifying--a tide that might swamp. Now, the thunder of the world's traffic was a shout of triumph. He would launch out, let the tide carry him where it might.

All London was resounding with the project of Cook's third voyage round the world--the voyage that was to settle forever how far America projected into the Pacific. Recruits were being mustered for the voyage. It came to Ledyard in an inspiration--the new field for his efforts, the call of the sea that paved a golden path around the world, the freedom for shoulder-swing to do all that a man was worth. Quick as flash, he was off--going _with_ the tide now, not a derelict, not a stranded hull--off to shave, and wash, and respectable-ize, in order to apply as a recruit with Cook.

In the dark, somewhere near the sailors' mean lodgings, a hand touched him. He turned; it was the rich man's son, come profuse of apologies: his father had returned; father and son begged to proffer both financial aid and hospitality--Ledyard cut him short with a terse but forcible invitation to go his own way. That the unknown colonial at once received a berth with Cook as corporal of marines, when half the young men of England with influence to back their applications were eager to join the voyage, speaks well for the sincerity of the new enthusiasm.

{248} Cook left England in midsummer of 1776. He sighted the Pacific coast, northward of what is now San Francisco, in the spring of 1778.

Ledyard was the first American to see the land that lay beyond the Rockies. It was not a narrow strip as men had thought, but a broad belt a thousand miles long by a thousand broad, an unclaimed world; for storms drove Cook offsh.o.r.e here; and the English discoverer did not land till abreast of British America.

At Nootka thousands of Indians flocked round the two vessels to trade.