MOUNT RAINIER 



A RECORD OF EXPLORATIONS 



I. THE MOUNTAIN DISCOVERED AND 

 NAMED, 1792 



BY CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER, R.N. 



CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER, the great English navigator and 

 explorer, lived but forty years, from 1758 to 1798. He entered 

 the British navy on the Resolution under Captain James 

 Cook in 1771 and was with that even more famous explorer 

 during his second and third voyages, from 1772 to 1780. He 

 was placed in command of the Discovery and Chatham in 

 1791 and sent to the northwest coast of America. On this 

 voyage he discovered and named Puget Sound and many other 

 geographic features on the western coast of America. 



The portions of his Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific 

 Ocean, giving the record of his discovery, naming, and explora- 

 tion in the vicinity of Mount Rainier, are taken from Volume II 

 of the second edition, published in London in 1801, pages 79, 

 118, and 134-138. 



[Tuesday, May 8, 1792.] The weather was serene 

 and pleasant, and the country continued to exhibit, 

 between us and the eastern snowy range, the same 

 luxuriant appearance. At its northern extremity, 

 mount Baker bore by compass N. 22 E. ; the round 

 snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity, 

 and which, after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I 

 distinguished by the name of MOUNT RAINIER, bore 

 N. [SJ 42 E. 



[Saturday, May 19, 1792.] About noon, we passed 

 an inlet on the larboard or eastern shore, which seemed 

 to stretch far to the northward ; but, as it was out of the 



