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- 34 VICTORIA ILLUSTRATED.
EARLY HISTORY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.
THE Straits of Juan de Fuca were given their name by Captain Mears, in the service of the English Government, nearly two centuries after
their discovery in 1 590 by Juan de Fuca, who was sent by the Viceroy of Mexico with an expedition under the Spanish Government to search
for the open north-west passage then supposed to exist, and fortify it against the English. Just two centuries later (in 1790)
Spain sent another expedition on the same errand under Quadra, while England sent an expedition under Vancouver.
Both fleets sailed up the straits in their vain quest for the passage. Vancouver island was first called Quadra Island, but then changed
its name on a friendly compromise to that of Quadra-Vancouver, and subsequently to Vancouver, who furnished the first maps and surveys ever
made of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the Straits of Georgia and Puget Sound. This change of name was broughtabout mainly by the loss of
prestige of the Spaniards, British supremacy being felt through the friendly relations existing between them and the Indians, who were very
powerful at this time.
It was only two years after the advent of Vancouver ;hat Sir Alexander Mackenzie, then a young man, left Montreal with a canoe, and
compassed the distance to the Pacific ; this trip, which clearly demonstrated the non-existence of a north-west passage by water, as a
short route to India, caused the abandonment of explorations in this direction with that purpose in view ; but in the early Forties of
the present century, it opened the agitation of a short route to India and the Orient, by land and water both.
The settlement of this vast territory was unattended by bloodshed. The dispute of boundary line with the United States, which at one time
bade fair to create trouble was settled by arbitration, and in 1849 Vancouver Island was constituted a Crown Colony, while the Mainland
followed in 1858 ; eight years later the two colonies were
WILSON-DALBY BLOCK.
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