Washington State [antikvár]

More than thirty years before Captain John Smith sailed up the northeastern coast of North America and named it New England, Sir Francis Drake had sailed past the opposite coast and, possibly because it was- raming that day, his thoughts turnéd to home and he called it Nova Albion, which means the same thing. Somé 250 years later, after New Englanders had taken to calling themselves Americans, it was still undecided as to whether the Pacific Northwest above the Columbia River would become a part of the United States or always be an outpost of the British Empire.The British didn't pay a lot of attention to the Northwest until 1776, when events in the Northeast made them think it might be a good idea to get serious about finding the Northwest Passage across the continent before the American rebels claimed all of it. They sent Captain James Cook who, after a sojourn in Hawaii, which he discovered on the way, arrived at the coast of North America in 1778 and claimed it all for the same King George ül who was losing his toehold back East. Cook's men alsó discovered sea otters in the waters off the Northwest, and before they finished their voyage they discovered that the Chinese were willing to pay plenty for more of them. It brought the English back in search of more furs. Meanwhile, the Spanish were already there but, before long, thanks to events on the other side of the world, they decided to concentrate on California instead of the lands further north. It left the British, in the person of Captain George Vancouver, free to claim not only the coast, but the interior, too.It wasn't as though the Americans hadn't been active there. Captain Róbert Gray discovered and explored the mouth of the Columbia River in 1792. He named it in honor of his ship, the first American vessel to sail around the world. But Vancouver"s men took the much shorter voyage up the river and decided it was theirs in spite of Gray's accomplishments. John Jacob Astor established a fur trading post, which he modestly named Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, but a year later, the British-controlled North West Company took it over. The treaty that ended the War of 1812 gave the former combatants joint custody of the territory south of 54 degrees, 40 minutes north latitude, above which, both the Americans and the British agreed, was Russian territory.Several American parties explored the Pacific Northwest during the years of joint occupation, and in spite of a wave of Anglophobia that was sweeping the United States east of the Mississippi at the time, the representatives of both England and America got along surprisingly well. But there was no mistake who was in charge. It was neither the British nor the Americans. It was the Hudson's Bay Company.By the mid-1820s, the Bay had absorbed the old North West Company and had alsó managed to eliminate all the other competition in the fur business. Among the trading posts it acquired in the merger with North West was the former American fort at Astoria, which it moved to the north bank of the Columbia River because it seemed certain that the day wasn't far off when the Oregon Territory south of the river would become American. But no one on either side of the river had any doubt that the Union Jack would fly forever north of the Columbia. Before long the English moved about a hundred miles up the river, and concentrated their operations in a new fort they named for George Vancouver, who had taken their flag there in the first place.Fort Vancouver became the business and social center of the entire Northwest under the tough but benevolent hand of the company's chief