Mt. Rainier or Mt. Tacoma — Which? 



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The mountain was named Rainier by Captain George Van- 

 couver in 1792. In an article in the Sierra Club Bulletin, 

 Vol. 6, No. I, there is given a measurement of the height of the 

 mountain and the historic facts relating to its discovery. Van- 

 couver named "the round snowy mountain," after his friend 

 Rear-Admiral Rainier. No one had a better right to stand 

 sponsor. The names which he gave to the peaks, bays, chan- 

 nels and islands of that section are all in use to-day. Mount 

 Hood and Mount Baker, after Lord Hood and Admiral Baker ; 

 Puget Sound, after his first officer, Peter Puget ; the Straits of 

 Georgia and Queen Charlotte Sound, after his King and 

 Queen ; Discovery Island, after his ship, and so on through the 

 list. All of these names remain unquestioned. 



The advocates of a change insist that Rainier was a naval 

 officer who sank one of our ships during the Revolutionary 

 War. Granted that this be so, does it not add an element of 

 historic interest? They ask, "why should the mountain be 

 named after an English admiral who never saw it?" forgetting 

 that our well loved Mount Vernon gets its name from an 

 EngHsh admiral who never saw it. Nor are they well informed 

 when they question Vancouver's right to use names of friends. 

 Every explorer does exactly this and properly so. 



Few people on the Pacific Slope are familiar with the work 

 of Vancouver and realize how much we owe him. Professor 

 Davidson, who re-occupied the positions from which Van- 

 couver made his surveys, says that no man ever did better 

 surveying work, considering the dull sailing ships and the 

 surveying instruments then in use. Nor should we forget the 

 eloquent tribute paid him at the time of the Alaska boundary 

 discussion : 



In the conventions of 1822-1825, between Russia and the United 

 States and Russia and Great Britain, the only charts available for that 

 long diplomatic controversy were those of Vancouver ; by the decisions 

 of those conventions Russia held all the Archipelago Alexander; and 

 in 1867 the United States purchased from Russia the territory of Alaska, 

 won by Vancouver's silent but unanswerable testimony. 



As to the exact height of the mountain, continued misstate- 

 ment has been made in various publications of a popular * 



*Scribners and Colliers may be instanced as offenders. The height of the moun- 

 tain is given as 14,800 and the statement added, "the highest mountain in the 

 United States proper. It is also called Mount Tacoma." 



