1907, when Amundsen completed his four years' voyage by sailing into San Francisco Bay. It is an interesting illustration of the view here set forth that the ship in which the navigation of the Northwest passage was finally accomplished now floats upon a pond in Golden Gate Park.

Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century so little had been done towards elucidating the geography of the north and northwest of America that it would be unsuitable, in the present instance, to go into details respecting the earlier explorations. The activity shown by Peter the Great in sending out Bering was not confined to Russia, the commercial ambitions of other European nations, particularly England and France, led, at the same period, to world-wide explorations looking to the development of foreign trade. As one of the great unexplored areas of the globe was the Pacific Ocean, it was inevitable that the search for a Northwest passage would be taken up again with renewed vigor. The new advocate of the quest was Arthur Dobbs, and owing to his persistence three expeditions were sent out before the middle of the century. The Hudson's Bay Company equipped two ships which sailed in 1737 but never returned. The English government detailed two ships in 1741 which did not get beyond the confines of Hudson's Bay. Finally, Dobbs succeeded in raising sufficient money by public subscription to send out two ships more in 1746. One of these Dobbs named the California, thus indicating the further object of the undertaking; and it is of interest to know that the scheme for which Dobbs could obtain such generous support contemplated that "if a discovery should be made of this passage, a considerable settlement should be made that settlement should be made the rendezvous for all ships going from or returning to Europe, should be the head settlement, as Batavia is to the Dutch in India, and from hence the trade might spread to Asia, India, Mexico, and Peru; and from this place the islands in the great South Sea might be discovered, and a commerce be begun with them."

in California;

and

The exploration of the South Sea did not wait upon the charting of a Northwest passage. After Anson's voyage (1740), Byron (1764), Wallis and Carteret (1766), and Captain Cook (1768, 1772, 1776) continued the work he had commenced of exploring the Pacific Ocean-and of alarming the Spanish authorities in

regard to the safety of their possessions. Cook's third voyage was made for the purpose of examining the northwest coast for a passage or strait to the Atlantic; this was not found, but the indirect result of the voyage was the beginning of the fur trade on the northwest coast by English and American ships. The opposition of the Spanish authorities in Mexico to this trade led to the Nootka Sound controversy which gave world-wide prominence to the northwest coast and terminated Spain's claims to sovereignty north of California. Before the Nootka affair had been finally settled between England and Spain the United States had acquired a first footing on the Pacific through the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Gray on May 11, 1792. The next year, moreover, the continent was crossed for the first time.

The progress of the French across the continent that gave concern to Gálvez and the junta of 1768 in the city of Mexico, reached its farthest point west in La Vérendrye's discovery of the Rocky Mountains in January, 1743. Years elapsed, however, before this discovery was followed up, and then it was by English fur traders. In 1769 Samuel Hearne was sent out by the Hudson's Bay Company and before his return in 1772 had reached the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine River. In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie, a member of the Northwest Company, explored to its mouth the river that bears his name; four years later he crossed the Canadian Rockies and reached the Pacific Ocean opposite Queen Charlotte Island on the 22d of July, 1793.

It was not Mackenzie's route, however, but that of Lewis and Clark that proved to be the long-sought substitute for the northwesterly route to California. The line of approach in the latter case was by the Missouri River, which had previously been explored as far as the Mandan nation in North Dakota by the subjects of Spain in Upper Louisiana. Lewis and Clark made the overland journey from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River and return between 1804 and 1806. In reality the American approach to California involves the entire history of the "westward movement" from ocean to ocean. By this expedition, joined with the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, it was advanced to the Pacific Ocean. With the acquisition of Louisiana fur traders and trappers overran the new territory and penetrated again beyond the contiguous Spanish frontier. So by the end of the third de

cade of the nineteenth century the first beginnings of the overland stream of American immigration appear in California in the persons of Jedediah Smith (1826) and the two Patties (1828).

The contrast between the Spanish and English methods of colonization are nowhere more apparent than in the respective approaches of the Spaniard and American to California. Not 30 much as an adventurer had penetrated to Alta California from the southward when in 1769, an expedition under the direct auspices of a minister of the crown, led by an officer in the Spanish army, accompanied by friars duly appointed as missionaries, set out for the purpose of establishing a government at Monterey and San Diego. Not until the machinery was installed did the authorities in Mexico turn their attention to promoting settlement.

On the American side a period of conflict with Spanish neighbors across the Mississippi was ended suddenly by the Louisiana purchase. American frontiersmen and traders instantly crossed the river to exploit the new land, and within a quarter of a century had opened paths into every part of it. Where these adventurers led the American government followed-tardily. So in Oregon there arose the curious anomaly of a joint occupancy, while the American settlers in Texas had erected and maintained an independent government before their own extended its protection over them. The American approach to California was begun by individuals making their way there by sea round the Horn and overland across the continent; it was made effective by the establishment of American government in Oregon and Texas. When this had been accomplished it was obvious that a continued hold by Mexico on this territory was strategically impossible.

Nevertheless a great barrier of mountains, chasms, and deserts lay between California and the country east of the Rocky Mountains and it is not at all certain that a Pacific Republic would not have arisen if the railroad had not provided a new approach.

In the long run, however, it has been realized that something more than a railroad is necessary-a country can not be colonized effectively on the basis of the expenditure incidental to transcontinental travel. Hence it is that the discovery of a route by water has lost none of its importance with time. We go back now in the twentieth century to create the route dreamed of in the sixteenth century, and utilized in anticipation, one might say, by

the buccaneers of the seventeenth. The canal at Panama has many justifications but principally is it important, in the eyes of a Californian, because it brings Europe as near as is physically possible to his own shores.

I have now indicated the lines of approach that have been followed by Europeans in reaching the remote coast of California. With the other half of the subject, the lines of approach by which the peoples of Asia have reached the same place, it is not a present intention to speak further than to say that the expansion of oriental nations has more than once brought European civilization to the test, and that the brunt of a great oriental expansion confronts this western outpost of European civilization. It can not be supposed that laws of our own promulgation will of themselves afford us protection when the dense masses of China, for example, discover that the barrier of the ocean is no longer impassable.

With reference to my Despatch No 15 of the 3d. ultimo upon the subject of the Relations between Mexico and Texas, I inclose to you, for your information Copies of a communication which I have received from Mr Ashbel Smith, and of a correspondence which I have held with Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris, having reference to that subject.2

Captain Elliot. R. N.

'F. O., Texas, Vol. 18.

Aberdeen.

This correspondence treats of the project of joint mediation between Mexico and Texas, by England, France, and the United States. Aberdeen declined to join in this, stating England's preference to act alone. The enclosures were:

(1) Smith to Aberdeen, August 19, 1842. (In Garrison, Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, III, 1011, in Am. Hist. Assoc. Report, 1908, II,-but the date there given is "August 15 (?)." In this was enclosed copy of Smith to Guizot, August 15, 1842. (In Idem., III, 1387.)

(2) Aberdeen to Cowley, No. 147, October 15, 1842. Aberdeen here stated that England, carrying out the plan of her treaties with Texas, had already offered mediation, but had met with no encouragement, and that since Mexico was at the moment angry at an alleged violation of neutrality by the United States, more might probably be accomplished by similar individual action, than by joint action. He enclosed to Cowley correspondence to show that there was little present prospect of Mexican acquiescence in the proposed mediation. These letters were: Aberdeen to Pakenham, No. 21, July 1, 1842; and No. 24, July 15, 1842; Pakenham to Aberdeen, No. 80 (September?), 1842.

(3) Cowley to Aberdeen. No. 349, October 24, 1842. For comment on the proposed tripartite mediation, see Adams, British Interests and Activities in Texas, 117-119.