GEOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 263 
than one-half mile wide, lead into it, one on the north and one on the south ; between them are 
the so-called middle sands. 
Both these channels have three fathoms on the bar at low water, and they are easily found 
and quite accessible. 
The interior of the basin may be divided into two parts, a northern and a southern part. 
The northern part presents its greatest extent from east to west, and the southern part runs 
for nearly twenty miles to the south and parallel to the shore. The whole is filled with innu- 
‚ merable shoals, banks, mud flats, and low spits of land, which, like small peninsulas, run out 
from the land. 
The shoals are nearly all bare at low water. Between them and the said peninsulas extends 
a net of many navigable channels, but vessels can approach the shore in only few places. 
Quite a number of small rivers and creeks empty into the bay, of which the principal are 
the Nasal, the Copaluks, and the Willopah. 
The tides, the extremes of which are about the same as in the Columbia river at Astoria, 
extends from eight to fifteen miles up these rivers, but they can hardly be considered thus 
far navigable for small vessels. 
The bay is visited principally by coasting vessels engaged in collecting oysters for the San 
Francisco market. The country around the bay is, like most of the interior of the Mount 
Olympus peninsula, heavily wooded with hemlock, fir, spruce, and arbor vite. 
There seems to be а strong probability that Shoalwater bay once formed a part of the 
estuary of the Columbia river, the rocky promontory of Cape Disappointment being then an 
island; very narrow and low isthmuses separate the waters of Columbia river from Shoalwater 
bay, and the Indians have several portages over which they transport their canoes in passing 
to and fro. 
This interesting bay was for the first time discovered and named by Captain Meares, on 
the 5th of July, 1788. He did not enter it, but looked into it and recognized its principal 
characteristics from the masthead. He states that the bay extended a considerable way inland, 
spreading into several arms or branches to the northward and eastward, and that the back of 
the bay was bounded by high mountains*. 
Vancouver did not explore this bay, though he ordered an exploration of the neighboring 
bay, Gray’s harbor. Не could not even have accurately studied Мейгев в report, for he does 
not even speak of Shoalwater bay, and scarcely indicates a bay on his chart. He has only 
Shoalwater cape. 
This may, perhaps, be the reason why the bay was so utterly a age by Subsequent 
navigators, and that even Wilkes, on his general chart of 1841, has not indicated this bay at 
all; but has, like Vancouver, only a Shoalwater cape. 
The great extent and interesting nature of Shoalwater bay have only been thorouglily 
developed in late years by the explorations of the Coast Survey. 98 first good жечу of this 
bay was made by Lieutenant Commanding Alden in 1852.—(See his minute chart of it in Coast 
Survey Report, 1853.) He discovered the two channels of entrance, and gave to the northern 
cape the name Toke Point, and to the southern the name Leadbetter Point. Perhaps for 
Toke Point the old name of Meares, Cape Shoalwater, to be found on so many charts, might 
be restored. 
© See Meares's Voyage, page 164. 
